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FRO^r THE 

ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC, 

OVERLAND. 

A SERIES OF LETTERS, 

BY 

Demas Baenes, 



desceibing a teip fkom 

New York, via Chicago, Atchison, the Great Platns, Denver, the 

Rocky Mountains, Central City, Colorado, Dakota, Pike's 

Peak , Laramie Park, Beidger's Pass, Salt Lake City, 

Utah, Nevada, Austin, \Va.shoe, Virginia 

City, the Sierras and California, 

TO San Francisco, 

thence home, 

by acapulco, and the isthmus of panama. 




, NEW YORK : 

D. VAN NOSTRAND, No. 192 BROADWAY 

1866. 



F5q4 



My Dear Mother : 

If blessings brighten as they take their flight, friends become precious in proportion as 
distance between them increases. Amid the varied duties of my life which have called 
me from the associations of childhood — as I have wandered in the wilderness — have stood 
upon the solitary mountain's peak — been surrounded by dangers, or have battled the storm 
upon the far-distant ocean, my thoughts have always fondly turned to you. Please to 
receive this token of remembrance, and feel that when these letters were penned, 
although you were distant in person, you were near me in thought. 

YOUR SON. 



Introductory Remarks. 



Fkom 1862 to '5, the mineral interests of tlie Western Territories 
were attracting the general attention of business men throughout the 
world. Well-authenticated representations of the fabul(jus production 
of Gold and Silver in Colorado _and Nevada, were passing from 
mouth to mouth, and reiterated through the press in such a manner 
as to turn incredulity into belief, and to secure investments from the 
most cautious. I have never had faith in distant enterprises of any 
kind — not from want of intrinsic merit, but from general disbelief in 
the competency of management. Gradually, however, I became 
interested in Gold Mines in Colorado, Silver in Nevada, and 
Quicksilver m California. My associates had made me President 
of several companies, and I felt it to be my duty to the pubhc 
and to myself, to know, first-handed, just what could be tnithfully 
said in favor of these properties. At great sacrifice to my local 
interests, and with great expectations, I started to traverse the Con- 
tinent on a tour of inspection. Had my opinions been confirmed, it 
would have made more than a million dollars diflereuce to me. I 
have to add, that since my return I have not disposed of, or offered 
to dispose of, one foot or share of my mineral property, except in 
connection with these full statements. 

While pursuing the above object, I communicated the following 
hurried letters to my friends, through the Brooklyn Eayle. Numerous 
applications have been made for copies, which I could not furnish ; 
and, at this late day, I have consented to reprint them in this form. 



6 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

I claim for these letters one only merit — fidelity. They are a true, 
plain statement of the country as it is. We have been so long edu- 
ce ted to believe that "Westward the star of Empire takes its way," 
that we fail to realize that the resources of the country may not 
increase as we proceed towards the setting sun. Few travellers have 
cared to correct this opinion. If I stand alone to-day, I shall not 
when the subject is better understood ; and these letters may be 
the means of saving others from sad disappointment. 

Demas Barnes. 

Beooexyn, December 12, 1866. 



From the Atlantic to the Pacific. 



OVERLAND. 



I. 

Comforts of Staging — Crops -Temperature. 

Denver, Colorado Territory, June 21, 1865. 

I HAD not deemed it a great undertaking for 
another to cross the Continent overland, but when I 
sit here midway, at the foot of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, the habits of my hfe changed — all connection 
with the accumulated interests of many years of 
toil suspended, social ties sundered, kind friends 
and loved ones far behind me, with rugged hills, 
parched deserts, and lonely wastes far, far ahead, I 
do feel it is a great undertaking for me — for any 
one. Many friends said they envied me my trip, 
would themselves like to go, etc. I do not doubt 
their sincerity — I have thought so myself — but I 
beg to undeceive them. It is not a pleasant, but it 
is an interesting trip. The conditions of one man's 
running stages to make money, while another seeks 



O FKOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

to ride in them for pleasure, are not in harmony to 
produce comfort. Coaches will be overloaded, it 
will rain, the dust will drive, baggage will be left to 
the storm, passengers will get sick, a gentleman of 
gallantry will hold the baby, children will cry, 
nature demands sleep, passengers will get angry, 
the drivers will swear, the sensitive will shrink, 
rations will give out, potatoes become worth a gold 
dollar each, and not to be had at that, the water 
brackish, the whiskey abominable, and the dirt 
almost unendurable. I have just finished six days 
and nights of this thing ; and I am free to say, 
until I forget a great many things now very visible 
to me, I shall not undertake it again. Stop over 
nights ? No you wouldn't. To sleep on the sand 
floor of a one-story sod or adobe hut, without a 
chance to wash, with miserable food, uncongenial 
companionship, loss of seat in a coach until one 
comes empty, etc., won't work. A through- ticket 
and fifteen inches of seat, with a fat man on one 
side, a poor widow on the other, a baby in your 
lap, a bandbox over your head, and three or four 
more persons immediately in front, leaning against 
your knees, makes the picture, as well as your 
sleeping place, for the trip — but of all this when I 
come to it. 

This letter should have been written from Atchi- 
son, but I had not the time. Those who constantly 
travel are familiar with our country east of the 



LUXURIES OF WAR. 9 

Mississippi river ; but many do not travel, and 
are now receiving their first impressions. I shall 
not weary you with detail, but take the trip as 
I find it, from N'ew York to San Francisco, June 
7th, 1865. The ^ew York railroads are not as 
crowded as they were last season. Too much rain 
has fallen for corn east of Syracuse. Many fields 
must be replanted, with chance not to ripen, or the 
crop is a failure. Other cereals look finely, and 
httle change to Central Michigan. In the vicinity 
of Rochester, and throughout our richest agricul- 
tural districts, many women may be seen tilling the 
soil as regular field-hands. I could but remark the 
contrast between this and when I was a boy, of the 
same section. All were then more on a level, and 
a woman's position was respected. Xow, the 
accumulation of money by the few — an investment 
in untaxable 7-30's — removes the happy patriot 
and owner thereof from common sympathy with 
the masses ; while the widow's boy, killed in battle, 
and the high taxes upon calico, brooms, and bonnets, 
which she is bound to pay, makes her a peasant 
and a hireling — one of the beauties of war and 
a national debt. Oh ! dear, deluded people ! did 
you ever think of European caste, what it means, 
how it is created, and who it affects ? A few years 
will teach some new political lessons in this 
country. 

The oil fever is not yet dead. ^N'ew derricks are 



10 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

going up, and wells are going down, through 
Western New York, Ohio, Canada, Michigan, 
Illinois, etc. I do not learn of any considerable 
success. 

Crops are much more forward from Adrian, 
Michigan, west to Galesburg, Illinois, from which 
place south to Quincy, and west to St. Joseph, 
they are about the same as in Western New York 
— say a difference of two weeks. The atmospheric 
influences affecting the isothermal line in a per- 
fectly level country, are very interesting and aston- 
ishing to a person seeking a home, or caring to 
know the cause of a very singular effect. Wash- 
ington is in the same latitude with San Francisco ; 
New York with Naples ; Quebec with Paris ; while 
populous London is opposite frozen Labrador, and 
St. Petersburg corresponds with the lower part of 
Greenland ! 

My dear lady friends, when we passed those 
numerous little lakes in Southern Michigan, filled 
with beautiful pond lilies, how I thought of your 
rosy cheeks, pouting lips, and terrific waterfalls! I 
wish every lady in the house where I live, had to 
have one of these exquisite lilies in her hair at 
every evening's dinner. What a glorious punish- 
ment for being pretty ! 



CHICAGO. 11 



II. 



Chicago — Sanitaey Fair — General Observations — St. 
Joseph. 

Denver, Colorado Territory, June 21, 1865. 

Next to New York, Chicago may be considered 
the typical American city. More changes have 
taken place there in my two years' absence than 
have been produced in Hartford, Albany, etc., in 
twenty. Its buildings are metropolitan — its hotels 
are numerous and first class — its business immense 
— its theatres splendid — its women beautiful — its 
water pure — ice clear — streets straight — and every- 
thing appears to be on the luxurious, loud order. 
Chicago has the best pavements in the United 
States, known as Nicholson pavements. Eight 
years ago I saw them being laid. Pieces of two- 
inch plank twelve inches long are saturated with 
composition, placed endwise upon a concrete foun- 
dation set one and a half inches apart, the seams 
filled with macadamizing material. They are 
smooth, ornamental, clean, and, what they are in- 
tended for. noiseless and easy for horses. They 
have stood the test and are durable. Do not sup- 
pose, dear Mr. Alderman, that Chicago cannot test 



12 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

a pavement as well as Broadway. Policemen are 
kept at the corners of Lake street to hurry on the 
crowd. Our Broadway pavement ought to be in- 
dicted as a nuisance for cruelty to animals. What 
a discomfort — what an outrage — what a cruelty it 
is ! Every paper in the Metropolitan District 
should keep a stereotype article at the head of a 
column denouncing it, until it is changed. 

Of course I attended the great Sanitary Fair — 
was induced to go sight-seeing after lions. Well, 
we saw them — lions, elephants, Rebecca at the 
well, a place for a fountain without water, the stars 
and stripes, some perfumery, corn starch, churns, 
bed quilts, plantation bitters, baby jumpers, daguer- 
reotypes, the Lord's prayer written by a soldier 
with his toes, and many other equally rare, select, 
and wonderful works of art and nature. Among 
them, imported for the occasion, and as kind of 
trump cards, were sandwiched in. Generals Grrant, 
Sherman, and Hooker. As I had been solicited to 
contribute to this fair, and had done so with most 
charitable intent, I improved the occasion to look 
the institution over, and I take this occasion to say, 
I think it quite time that these expensive begging 
abortions were played out, discountenanced, dis- 
couraged, and denounced. Let people disburse 
their charities their own way ; but as to begging of 
other people, and themselves receiving the credit, 
after deducting enormous expenses, it is not credit- 
able, moral, or just. 



LARGE FARMS. 13 

We took cars westward at twelve midnight ; 
were made quite comfortable by a colored boy in 
a sleeping-car. In the morning, requesting to be 
called early to see the country, I passed him a half 
dollar, and found the commercial value of Eastern 
men to be very great. '' You lives Down-East, I 
reckon, masser — Bosting or Few York?" "Yes," 
I replied, "I reside in New York, and why did you 
think so?" ''Cause, masser, yese Eastern gemmen 
is sort a careless with yer money. The feller in 
the other car thought he was goin' to get yer ; but 
I kept good watch, yer know, and told yer how 
nice my car was — yah !" " Yes, I remember. 
Where are yoz^ from?" I continued. ''Ise pretty 
considerably from the State of Missouri. If yer 
wants anything at the depot, masser, just call on 
me." I hope my Eastern friends will sustain the 
reputation they appear to have acquired with these 
poor unfortunate fellows, who gaze their eyes out 
oi their sockets for a few dimes. 

Orchards, trees, hedges, houses, etc., are vastly 
increasing in Ilhnois. The farms are upon such a 
magnificent scale as to create a home-feeling, and 
one of national pride. The Central Park contains 
eight hundred and sixty acres. We passed corn 
fields, many of them more than half as large as the 
Park, with rows as straight as an arrow, and so 
long they blend together in the distance. 

With so scant a water power, and an open 



14 FKOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

prairie furnishing wind, I am much surprised that 
windmills are not used upon every farm. They 
are cheap, well adapted for threshing, pumping, 
churning, sawing wood, grinding, etc. Were I 
without business, I think I could make an easy and 
rapid fortune introducing them. 

Crossing the Mississippi river at Quincy, you 
are pretty lucky to escape casualty, and reach 
Palmyra Junction, on the Hannibal and St. Joseph 
Railroad — eleven miles, in three hours. The road 
is in terrible condition, runs slowly, and gives one 
the worth of his money in perpendicular jolts. The 
country is mostly prairie, poorly cultivated, but 
rich soil, and generally well drained. You do not 
see a good Eastern farm-house through the State. 
Land can be bought very low — say eight to twenty 
dollars per acre ; just as good as will command 
double that in Illinois. Grovernment block-houses 
stand near each bridge. Much damage has been 
done by the hostile forces along this route. Many 
fugitives, women and children, are returning to 
their distant homes. Our people bear these misfor- 
tunes with much better fortitude than we could 
suppose. 

St. Joseph is not up to the standard of most 
Western cities, although of great importance and 
large business — greatly scattered. It claims 15.000 
inhabitants. Elwood, on the western bank, w^as at 
one time pushed by its energetic founder, A. R. 



ST. JOSEPH — ELWOOD — ATCHISON. 15 

Elwood, Esq., of Otsego county, New York, as an 
imposing rival ; but it is on low ground, and the 
public are not yet able to appreciate its supposed 
advantages. 

A railroad, some twenty-six miles south, takes 
us opposite Atchison. We waited in the omnibus 
one full hour for the ferry-boat to start across for 
us. Time is of very little account here. The peo- 
ple seem to be impressed with the idea that the 
world was not made in a minute, and that another 
day will come. This brings us to Atchison, the 
starting point of the overland stage. It is certainly 
the last place a man would ever live in for pleasure. 
The ground is terribly washed and gullied out, the 
surface uneven, earth sticky, and the whole appear- 
ance desolate and uninviting. Atchison claims four 
thousand inhabitants ; I do not give it two thou- 
sand. My friend Butterfield will excuse the truth 
in this matter. My next starts me over the plains, 
and where the interest of the trip commences. 



16 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 



III. 

Denyer — The Plains — General Appearance — Storms — 
A Little About Gold — Atmospheric Phenomena— 
Water-spouts — Anchoring the Stage. 

Denver, June 25, 1865. 

The Indians have interfered with the running of 
the stages west of this, and it is uncertain when I 
shall be able to proceed. I have visited the mines 
in the mountains at Central City and Black Hawk, 
and returned here to wait my chances. 

I am an average reader, but have never seen the 
Western plains and the incidents of this route cor- 
rectly described. Colton and Mitchell both locate 
Denver in the mountains, while it is on the plains, 
twelve miles from the slightest show of a hill. 
What it was ever located here for is more than 
I can decipher. The circulars and time-tables 
of the stage company have but little regard to 
exact distances, route, etc, while verbal information, 
acquired from residents and ordinary messengers, 
is wholly unreliable. In fact, a person learns to 
appreciate Talleyrand's definition of language, ''that 
it is made to conceal, not to utter, the truth," by a 
short sojourn among such a romantic and hetero- 



GOLD. 17 

geneous population as here exists. They hterally 
deal in "great expectations," and discount the re- 
sults at the first opportunity. Just think of it — 
one dollar a quire for the paper I write upon, ten 
cents apiece for eggs — at wholesale — ninety dollars 
for transporting sixty pounds of baggage ! Of course 
they are in a hurry to point you to a " blossom 
rock" — gold certain — a hole in the hill twelve feet 
deep, and consider they give you a bargain at fifty 
thousand dollars. Ten thousand carcasses of poor 
overworked animals, marking the highway over 
seven hundred miles of parching, treeless plain, is 
a small matter — ^while gold is before them, around 
them, everywhere. It is almost impossible not to 
partake of the general enthusiasm, for you hear 
gold discussed morning, noon, all night, and far 
into the next day. It is no myth. You see it — 
you select specimens for your cabinet — you hear 
the turning of the water-wheels, the puffing of the 
engines, the pounding of the stamps, the clatter of 
the pans — you see the steam of the retort and assay 
— you hold the pure golden nuggets in your hands, 
your eyes dilate, your mouth waters, and you think 
— what gold has done for the world, what we would 
have done without gold, what man will not do for 
gold, and how happy you would be, and how proud 
and happy would be those dear ones far away de- 
pendent upon you for existence, were you its pos- 
sessor. Dear reader, it is hard to break the charm, 

2 



18 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

or wake the dreamer — so, with generous feehng, I 
leave the gold mines of Colorado mitil I approach 
them in proper order, promising them a candid 
description, and now return to my last stopping- 
place. 

I shall not be prolix, but too much brevity will 
fail to convey a practical view of the immensity 
of our subject. The water poured into the ocean 
by the Mississippi river averages nineteen and a 
half trillions (19,500,000,000,000) cubic feet per 
year, while three times this amount is evapo- 
rated in the atmosphere and absorbed in the 
soil. All of this multiplied vast amount reaches 
the earth in rain or snow, condensed by the snow 
peaks of the Rocky Mountains as it passes east- 
ward from the Pacific Ocean. Holding this fact 
in view, and returning for a moment to Lake 
Michigan and Indiana, the line of prairie coun- 
try, and you will realize the atmospheric and 
physical influences which mark the characteristics 
of these immense plains. The eastern portion 
of the great prairie system of the United States 
presents almost a dead level surface, interspersed 
with forests, preventing devastating winds and 
the wash of vegetable decay which enriches the 
land. Wood gradually disappears, the land rises 
and becomes more rolling, and the streams swift, as 
you proceed west, until soon after crossing the Mis- 
souri river small timber is only seen skirting the 
water courses. From Julesburg, three hundred 



ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA. 19 

miles to the gorges of the mountains, such a thing 
as a tree, shrub, or bush is not to be seen. The 
result is, the land is swept by the most terrific gales, 
and the soil, being free and light, is either driven 
in clouds of dust and sand, or washed by bursting 
clouds of rain into the ravines and rivers, thence to 
the Balize and Gulf of Mexico — thus denuding 
these plains of vegetable life, and creating the rich 
alluvial bottom lands of the Mississippi. It is 
geologically proven that the land, from the junc- 
tion of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers down to 
the Gulf, has been formed in this way from what 
was once the Gulf of Mexico. Evidence is here 
indisputably furnished in what are denominated 
the " Buttes'^ — when the soil is of a more sohd 
character, composed of gravel or clay, small 
plateaus or peaks rise silent and alone in the 
prairies — with sides washed like the banks of 
gulches. Bear in mind, then, that this is not 
the land flowing with milk and honey — that we 
have embarked in a semi-barren plain — with a cli- 
mate more fickle than I had believed existed on 
the face of the earth. It was near evening of our 
second day, calm, delightful, but hot. I was sitting 
with the driver outside, holding an umbrella to 
protect me from the tropical heat while in but a 
linen coat. A cloud appeared in the south-east, a 
sudden and intensely cold breeze struck us, and I 
will venture to say the thermometer sank thirty 
degrees in ten minutes ; the whole heavens were 



20 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

streaked with forked lightnings ; the wind rose to a 
hurricane that seemed about to snap and start the 
very sods from the earth, while as to rain — it 
might have rained harder before, and it might have 
rained harder since, but I didn't happen to be out 
in it. A ship might as well proceed under full sail 
in a typhoon, as a stage across the plains in one of 
these storms. The teamsters understand them- 
selves, wheel the horses' heads from the wind, and 
lay to until their fury is passed. This is no fancy 
sketch. Twice during our passage were we com- 
pelled to make this kind of an uncertain anchorage. 
Stages are frequently capsized. When occurring 
in the night time, as did one of ours, and which is 
more usually the case — the Egyptian darkness, in- 
terspersed with vivid lightning the most incessant 
I ever witnessed — reverberating thunder that 
seemed to make the very earth quake and tremble 
— with no voice audible above the clatter of the 
pelting rain — one is strongly reminded that home 
would be a very comfortable place to be in. 

Immense fresh gullies and washes are thus con- 
stantly occurring. A high wind is of nightly occur- 
rence at this season of the year. It rains once or 
twice almost every day ; it is disagreeably cold 
once in two days, and intensely warm in about the 
same proportion. The scene shifts with the rapid- 
ity of a drama, and a panorama of beauty presents 
itself, to which neither the pen of Irvmg nor the 
pencil of Hogarth could do justice. Onward bound ! 



THE START. 21 



IV 



The Start — Fare — Home Keflections — Pilgrims — 
Game — Fording Streams — Sight of the Kocky 
Mountains. 

DexXver, Col., June 26, 1865. 

I HAVE run a little ahead of my diary. Ten miles 
out of Atchison, you are fairly in the prairie wilds, 
and make no town of account until you reach Den- 
ver, six hundred and forty miles. For convenience 
of forage the overland transportation and emigra- 
tion trains take all the western water courses and 
start from Leavenworth, Nebraska City, Atchison, 
St. Joseph, Omaha, &c,, so that no one route gives 
a full comprehension of this business. Butterfield's 
overland despatch will send out thirty thousand 
yoke (60,000 head !) of cattle this season, averag- 
ing six yoke to the wagon. They reach Denver, in 
say forty days. 

The fare from Atchison to Salt Lake is $350. 
Baggage over twenty-five pounds, $1 50 per pound 
— meals extra. I found them to commence at $1 
and advance to $2. All this is entirely different 
from the information given me at the Stage office 
in New York. 

It was eight o'clock in the morning. A whip 



22 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

cracked — a heavy Concord stage wheeled in front of 
the office ; on it was painted "Overland." Childish 
though it might have been, I felt sad ; it was a 
long distance. I was running from letters, from 
home, from friends. Life is not so full of pleasure 
that we can afford to put three thousand miles 
between us and our dearest heart treasures and not 
feel irresolute and pained. Our effects were soon 
loaded, 1,600 pounds of Mail in the Coot, our bag- 
gage on top exposed to the storm. Hear me, Mr. 
Halliday ; all the protection it had was extemporized 
by the passengers in the shape of coats and shawls 
— not even a cheap tarpaulin or an old blanket. 
I was lust taking my seat when a messenger handed 
me a telegraphic dispatch from New York. I think 
I should have secretly rejoiced had it announced 
some slight casualty demanding my return. JSTo, it 
was merely — "all's well.'' I breathed back a silent 
memoria in eterna^ and we were on our way, ascend- 
ing, descending, for six and a half days over the 
most beautiful landscape my eyes ever rested upon. 
The rugged, hard, sublime mountain scenery has 
ite charms, but to me the softened, genial, finished, 
smooth outlines of a cooling sea of land, sinking 
in the horizon, and colored by the different hues of 
the atmosphere, awakens sentiments of a different 
and far more agreeable character. Space as well 
as immensity, utility as well as subhmity, hfe in 
place of barrenness, affection instead of frigidity. 



THE PLAINS. 23 

are the sentiments in accordance with our emotional 
natures, calling us nearer to humanity, and striking 
cords of far sweeter strains. 

The few scattered farms of the first day out pre- 
sent little of interest. Houses of logs — a little 
wheat and hemp, small and poorly cultivated ; 
potatoes none. The great feature of the Plains is 
the transportation trains, usually consisting of thirty 
to fifty wagons, five yoke each. The wagons have 
high boxes, covered with white canvass drawn over 
high wooden bows. As they wind their slow 
course over the serpentine roads and undulating 
surface in the distance, a mile in extent (I saw one 
train five miles long), the effect is poetic, grand, 
beautiful. They select a high position for camping, 
draw the wagons in a circle, enclosing say a quar- 
ter, half, or full acre, the exterior serving as a fort, 
the inside as a camp, and a place wherein to drive 
the animals in case of danger, and to yoke or har- 
ness them for the next trip. One of these camps, 
seen at sundown, with night-fires kindled, and from 
five hundred to a thousand head of animals feeding 
near by, is well worth a long visit to behold. Of 
course the herd is watched by outriding muleteers. 
The trains start at four o'clock in the morning, 
camp at ten, and proceed again from two until six. 
Emigrants, or pilgrims as they are here termed, 
have lighter loads, and have only from two to four 
yoke — one yoke generally being of milch cows. 



24 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

answering a double and useful purpose. It is won- 
derful to see the number of farmers with their 
families and household goods thus migrating to 
further western homes. Those we saw were prin- 
cipally from the States of Illinois, Indiana, and 
Missouri, and were either bound for Utah, Oregon, 
or Washington Territory. We estimated from four 
to five hundred wagons passed each day — one day 
at least a thousand. This is only one route. 

The roads were heavy and we made but eighty 
miles the first twenty-four hours ; the route, bear- 
ing north by west, crosses into Nebraska at Cot- 
tonwood creek, one hundred and seven miles 
out, and reaches Fort Kearney on the Platte 
river, two hundred and sixty miles. Prairie fowl, 
quail, snipe, etc., are seen in abundance, though 
singular to say we get no taste of any at the 
stations. At the crossing of the Big Blue creek 
the driver put our feet about one foot under 
water without notice, and thought it a good 
joke. The dust and mud already in the coach, 
added to the crackers, etc., composing our lunch- 
eons, the small bags and bundles necessarily so 
deposited, made anything but an agreeable mess 
the balance of the way. This, like most other rivers 
this way, is a swift, unreliable stream, with steep 
banks. It rises sometimes two to six feet in an 
hour and becomes thirty feet deep. In two days 
it is nearly dry. 



INDIAN DEPREDATIONS. 25 

From Kearney the houses are prhicipally of sod 
or adobe, one story high, and generally without 
floors — stations from ten to fifteen miles apart, 
horses good, four to a coach, eating stations about 
two per day, meals as good as could be expected, 
excepting total absence of potatoes. 

From about one hundred and fifty miles out, our 
dignity was much enhanced by a government cav- 
alry escort of two or four horsemen with each stage 
night and day. The Indians have committed ter- 
rible depredations along three hundred miles of the 
route, burned and pillaged everything, destroyed 
six thousand bushels of corn at Julesburg, burned 
hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of wagons, 
merchandise, &c. One or two ranches, as they call 
farms here, had erected thick sod breastworks, per- 
forated for rifle shot, and stood the siege. Stock 
was either all lost or had to be protected in corrals 
in same manner. 

The two regiments stationed on this line are Con- 
federate volunteers from Louisiana and Tennessee. 
It is the universal testimony at every station that 
before they came here, the soldiers plundered and 
stole more than the Indians. Since they have been 
here no single theft has occurred. They are very 
courteous, and prefer remaining in service until 
things get more quiet at home. We did not en- 
counter any Indians, but saw many remains of their 
barbarity. 



26 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

I could not ascertain that any buffaloes have been 
captured here for two or three years. At least I 
saw none, though their old hard-beaten paths and 
wallowing holes were numerous. Of wolves we 
saw none, antelope we did see a few, and wanted 
much to eat them, the beef being horrid and 
tough. The Platte river is very straight, from a 
quarter to one mile wide from the Missouri to 
Denver. It is shoal most of the season and has no 
capacity for navigation. Its current is rapid. The 
soil becomes more barren and wasted as we 
approach the mountains, being a portion of the 
way almost a desert. As wood or bushes disappear, 
a beautiful, hardy, but prickly and unnutritious 
cactus in all variety of colors comes upon the scene 
and grows clear into the mountain gorges. I had 
never seen it cultivated in our Eastern gardens. 
It is equal to any tropical specimens of our conser- 
vatories, and stands a climate twenty to thirty 
degrees below zero. If not found on my return, I 
have arranged to have some sent me. It is the 
only thing worthy to be called a flower on the 
prairies. Other floral specimens few and coarse. I 
have heard travellers extol the floral beauties of 
the prairies. I do not find them. 

A large portion of the prairies are good for noth- 
ing, and never can be cultivated. They are cold 
and bare in winter — dry and washed in summer. 
The great enemy of the soil is the clouds which 



FUTURE PROSPECTS. 27 

gather in the mountains and burst — not rain — 
carrying everything before them. A channel one 
thousand feet wide was two years ago forced 
through the city of Denver, and now lies a plateau 
of sand, crossed by bridges — the town divided. 
The great want of prairies is wood and water. The 
bottom lands may be irrigated — the higher lands 
cannot be, except by artesian wells, the expense of 
which will not be warranted for many generations. 
Thirty feet wells, however, usually find water for 
drinking purposes, which could be raised by wind- 
mills, if desirable, but insufficient for irrigating 
land. N'ever look for dense population under these 
circumstances. It raises a question respecting our 
future political relations with the Pacific States, 
which each may discuss for himself. 

I undertake to say that a railroad is a political 
necessity, whether it pays financially or not. I 
have before remarked that for three hundred miles 
east of the Rocky Mountains no tree or shrub, and 
but little grass, appears. For a portion of the dis- 
tance there is literally no grass. I doubt if trees 
could be made to withstand the terrific winds even 
if they had soil to grow in. Even hay and all veg- 
etables have to be transported from the east. The 
emigrants have to carry their wood and gather buf- 
falo chips to cook their meals with. Insensibly we 
have made an elevation to Denver of over four thou- 
sand feet. Seasons must be short and farming 
inducements small. 



28 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACrFIC. 

At daybreak of our fifth day, we were at Brandy 
Station on the Platte river, and distinctly saw in the 
distance, the white-capped summits of the Rocky 
Mountains — those far off mythical hills of our child- 
hood. They looked, say thirty miles distant. We 
travelled all that day until three o'clock next morn- 
ing, and were still sixty-five miles to the nearest 
point first visible. We had seen these ranges over 
one hundred and seventy-five miles in an air-line ! 
They sparkle in the sunlight, rising from the plain, 
like gems upon a lady's bosom. The rarification 
of the atmosphere extends the vision to double its 
capacity upon water. My next will carry me into 
the mountains, down a shaft, out of a tunnel, with 
a piece of gold ore in my hands, and if not a brick 
in my hat, at least an idea in my head. 



DENVER. 29 



V. 

Denver — Golden City — Black Hawk — Central City — 
Gold Mining — Nary Nugget — High Up in the World. 

Denver, Col., June 27, 1865. 

Denver is a square, proud, prompt little place, 
which, like Pompey's Pillar, is surrounded by im- 
mensity. It is better built than St. Joseph or 
Atchison, has fine brick stores, four churches, a 
good seminary, two theatres, two banks, plenty of 
gambling shops, a fine United States mint, which I 
observed had nothing to do, and which, as near as 
I could ascertain, had actually coined the vast 
amount of forty thousand dollars in a whole year ! 
and the most abominable hotels a person ever put 
his feet into. There being no wood, brick becomes 
a necessity for building purposes — hence the char- 
acter of its buildings. Population claimed, six thou- 
sand. I am sorry to cut them down to four thou- 
sand, but that is more than they can count, unless 
they add the flies, of which at least several millions 
dine with us every day. I have omitted to speak of 
one feature in our travels which curdles the blood 
at every step. The cruelty to animals by the brutal 
drivers is perfectly awful. Each teamster carries a 



30 FBOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

raw-hide lash about nine feet long, one and a half 
inches in diameter at the belly, attached to a short 
stock or handle, folded over his shoulder, which he 
uses upon the poor, wiUing, overworked dumb 
beasts with apparent delight, and frequently draws 
blood at every stroke. The concussion is like the 
snap of a pistol. I wish the drivers — the most 
blasphemous wretches that ever disgraced a lan- 
guage — might have one good blow to see how they 
would like it. The seven hundred miles I have 
travelled have been literally lined with the bones 
and carcasses of domestic animals. 

We again cross the plains about fourteen miles 
to the foot hills of the mountains, where Clear 
Creek forces its way through, and where Denver 
should have been located. Irrigating canals are 
here in operation, some five, others fifteen miles 
long, and at points, I am informed, some crops are 
grown. I saw none. 

The grasshoppers had not left a spire of anything 
green standing. It was the same last year. Some 
attempts are now (June 26th) being made to re- 
plant corn, potatoes, &c. — a sorry prospect. 

About two miles up in the mountains on the 
course of Clear Creek, is a little plateau where 
stands Golden City — the capital of the territory. It 
probably contains seventy buildings, all of cheap 
character. What the inhabitants do to support 
themselves, beyond those engaged in teaming, I 
could not ascertain. 



DENVER TO CENTRAL CITY. 31 

The gulch, ravine, or caiioii, as it may be called, 
is rough and uninviting. The mountains, at first, 
show but few indications of forest, but as you ad- 
vance, a few straggling pines appear, which increase 
for say fifty miles, but interspersed with bald-top 
hills. Everything is side-hill and edgewise one 
way or the other, and the labor of securing wood is 
immense. I heard of a species of goat which 
always has its right legs shorter than those upon 
the other side for the purpose of grazing upon the 
side -hill. His face must always be one way and he 
gradually winds round and up the mountain. In 
his efforts to turn round, he tips over, and lands in 
the gulf below. This is probably the reason why 
the species do not increase in number. I can only 
say I did not, myself, dine from any such goat 
steak. 

Coal of indifferent quality has been discovered at 
the foot of the mountains ; this will no doubt 
improve. 

We arrive at Black Hawk and Central City, 
which are and should be one, after eight hours 
of heavy staging from Denver. I could not de- 
cline the generous hospitality of my friends, Messrs. 
Lee, Judd and Kinney, and made myself imme- 
diately at home. An area of, say, six miles in 
diameter, contains a population of some ten to 
fifteen thousand souls, mostly crowded into narrow 
gulches, branching oft' in different directions at 



32 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

Black Hawk. This vicinity is said to be rich in 
gold, lead, copper, sulphur, iron, antimony, cobalt, 
arsenic, &c. Grold alone is being worked ; there is 
no myth, exaggeration, or deceit ; they have it 
here, they say, in inexhaustible quantities. 

The hill-sides are dotted everywhere with tunnels 
and shafts ; the lodes are frequently but a few feet 
from each other. They will run from two to six 
feet wide at one hundred feet deep, and will assay 
from $50 to $200 per ton. To stop just here 
would leave the thing very handsome. But there 
is another side to it ; many mills are stopped, many 
lodes are not being worked : what is the reason ? 
Mill-masters reply, " labor is too high." No, that 
is not it. Ore which fairly assays $80 per ton, will 
work but $20 ; that's what's the matter. They do 
not know how to get the gold out. I find nine 
different processes working at this place alone, 
each claiming to be the best ; yet the result of all 
shows that something is wanting still. Do not be 
alarmed ; I, too, may have gold lodes to sell ! 
I wish to encourage scientific, practical research, so 
that when I sell or work them the gold can be got 
out. This is fast coming, but as almost all lodes 
require different treatment, I am content to wait a 
little, and let some one else do the experimenting. 
Some cheap desulphurizing process will no doubt 
come nearest to a scientific basis. Then, again, 
capital invested is too anxious for returns. No 



GOLD MINING. 33 

doubt the sensible way would be, first to secure 
your lodes, open your veins, test your ore at some 
neighbor's mill ; when you have got a good thing, 
encountered and conquered the inevitable poor 
"cap work,'' then pile up your ore, and let the air, 
the best desulphurizer in the world, work upon it 
one year — you have saved the money invested in a 
mill, have improved your ore twenty per cent., 
have had time to watch improvements, and know 
what kind of machinery you require, and are now 
prepared to put it up without mistake, at much 
less than original cost — will have swindled nobody 
with false hopes, and will have acted like men. The 
values, gentlemen, are here, but don't forget Mrs. 
Glass's recipe for cooking a hare : '' First, catch 
your hare." First, get your ore. Trace these 
applications. You will find but few exceptions in 
the result. The present mills may do well by 
running $20 to $30 per ton; saving the ''tailings," 
and next year running them again with better 
results. Too much waste exists in this respect. It 
is slightly expensive to dig, crib, and raise ore out 
of a shaft. I descended three hundred and seventy- 
five feet, and then wandered off several hundred 
feet in the drift on the Gregory lode. Such enter- 
prises are not child's play, by any means. It costs 
something to live here, and those who won't work 
must travel. Most everything comes from the 
States, and costs by the pound : Flour, 20 cents ; 



34 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

salt, 25 ; rice, 40 ; cheapest sugar, 35 ; coffee, 60 to 
85 ; common molasses, $4 50 per gallon ; eggs, 
$125 per dozen ; ham, 50 cents ; lard, 40 ; beans, 

35 5 corn, 20 ; potatoes, 25 ; butter, 60 ; hay, 10 ; &c. 
Many good companies are moving straight along 

in fine feather. The "Black Hawk" have been 
running fifty-five stamps for a long time, and will 
soon start equal to forty more. "The New York," 
"Ophir," "Naragansett," "Chase," "Consolidated," 
"Union," "United States," "Briggs," &c., are 
among the best, but are probably no better than 
others I did not learn so much about. The new 
" Continental," now nearly completed, will be one 
of the finest mills in the territory. It is to be 
operated by Colonel Clark's new process, and I 
doubt not will be a success. The peculiar forms of 
the sulphurets and pyrites containing the ore of this 
locality, makes the method of treatment really the 
great and only question. 

We are about eleven thousand feet high ; the air 
is very rare ; I readily get out of breath, and find 
climbing ladders and chasing stages up hill very 
fatiguing. The suction-pump will lift water but 
about twenty-two feet ; on the seaboard thirty-one 
to thirty-two is the standard. I see but little vari- 
ation in the thermometer. They claim it is very 
healthy, and say they had to import the first corpse 
to start a burying-ground. I find here two daily 
and weekly papers, three banks, many good stores. 



DETENTION. 35 

and fine schools, under the influence of Mayor 
Kinney, who thinks schools the greatest induce- 
ment to secure permanent miners. 

My stay here was altogether too short ; but, 
being ticketed to Salt Lake or fight with the In- 
dians, I was compelled to return to Denver and 
take my chances. As some one said about the 
Quakers, "The Lord may love the Indians, but I 
don't think he admires their conduct of late.'' 
They have taken a great fancy to white men's 
scalps and horses. These are the longest days, 
and, consequently, shortest nights. It is hardly 
dark at nine ; a bright moon irradiates the night, 
and day dawns at three in the morning. Short 
naps, with my hand on my six-shooter, and the re- 
assuring presence of a military escort, quiets my 
nerves, and would not add greatly to my insurance 
policy, in my estimation. The stages run on from 
here again, but only tri-weekly. The mail is piled 
up at different places, and I think the bottom of it 
here will hardly move for a month. I expect my 
Salt Lake letters are thus detained, and I shall not 
receive them. It. is outrageous the way the public 
are swindled by the proprietors of this stage-route. 
I speak only what I know, and repeat a remark 
made by the agents: "Too much trouble to tear 
the pile out from the bottom." If I remember cor- 
rectly, Mr. Halliday gets $800,000 per annum for 
carrying the United States mail once a day. This, 



36 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

of course, gives him a chance to run stages, carry 
passengers, and keep other people off the course. 
I have seen the stages pass through here loaded 
with passengers, and not carry a pound of mail, 
while perhaps two weeks' mail, or more, lay heaped 
up in the office ! The passage from Atchison to 
Salt Lake is $350. Eight passengers would be 
$2,800 ; extra baggage, say $100 more. 

I am to leave in the morning, unless further in- 
terrupted by Indians ; I expect to arrive in Salt 
Lake about July 6th, instead of 1st, as I should 
have done. I shall spend two days there — a few 
days at Austin, Nevada — Humboldt — Virginia City; 
thence to San Francisco — the Almaden Quicksilver 
Mines ; thence to the Geysers and the Sonora 
Quicksilver Mines, and take steamer August 1st 
for home. Those ladies who do not want an inside 
view of Brigham's harem must avoid my next let- 
ters, certain. 



MOUNTAIN STREAMS. 37 



Vl. 



Mountain Streams — Irrigation — Kesult of Mining — 
Prairie Dogs — Laramie Park — Primitive Geology — 
S. T. 1860 X— Indians— Men Killed. 

Fort Halleck, Dakota, July 1, 1865, 

I HAVE written too rapidly and with many omis- 
sions. Instead of the more direct route, via the 
North Platte and Fort Laramie, we now follow up 
the south fork in a south-westerly direction, enter- 
ing Colorado Territory, near Julesburg. At Cache- 
a-la-Poudre junction, the Platte makes a detour 
almost direct south, running for near one hundred 
and fifty miles, from twelve to twenty-five miles 
from the foot of the mountains. About every five 
to fifteen miles there proceeds from the mountains 
a swift, clear, beautiful stream, uniting as a tribu- 
tary to the Platte, and affording the most magnifi- 
cent system of irrigation and water power in the 
world. Aside from the influence of the water- 
spouts and its altitude, this section, between the 
mountains and the Platte, affords farming advan- 
tages I have seldom seen equalled. The prices 
obtainable for products in this section are enor- 
mous, and compensate in some degree for the incon- 



38 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

veniences of living here. With corn and potatoes 
at twenty cents per pound, or $12 per bushel, this 
is apparent. Young farm hands obtain from $60 
to $75 per month, and "found." Mechanics and 
miners get from $5 to $8 per day ; female house 
servants from $30 to $50 per month, and female 
cooks, $60 per month and "found." Lay in your 
dry goods for a two-years' stay and come out with 
a transportation train ; the balance is all profit. 

The water in the western part of the plains is 
impregnated with alkali, causing thirst and parched 
lips. I do not see that it is otherwise injurious, 
although in dry weather water pools settle entirely 
away, leaving a solid crust of saleratus. In such 
cases cattle are frequently killed. In this section 
the mountain creeks are very fine. 

Minute descriptions of practical mining wiU have 
no value for the majority of readers, hence I have 
sought to touch only upon subjects of general inter- 
est. Respecting the yield of mining in Colorado, 
no information can be obtained at the mint in Den- 
ver, or from any other authority here. Most of 
the product is sent east before being assayed. The 
probable approximation is, say by all processes, 
equal to 1,000 stamps or 3,000 tons of ore reduced 
per day, yielding, say $20 per ton ; three hundred 
days per year is $6,000,000. I think that less than 
one quarter of the above mills are in operation, not 
from want of ore, but from lack of knowledge how 



EOCKY MOUNTAINS. 39 

to work it. If the total cost of mining is now equal 
to total receipts of $20 to $25 per ton from ore 
assaying $80 per ton, when the working can be 
made to run $60 per ton, the difference will be 
profit, and will again stimulate the development of 
other mines. The use of salt is a large item in 
amalgamating, which, at twenty cents per pound, is 
a great expense. N'ext comes quicksilver, indis- 
pensable in any process, which loses about three 
per cent, of each assay, and of which it is estimated 
180,000 pounds are annually consumed in this sec- 
tion alone. Of the quicksilver product of the world 
over, ninety-five per cent, of the entire amount 
comes from only three mines. The opening of the 
Sonoma mines is very opportune, and is a source 
of congratulation to miners. 

After six days detention at Denver, with promise 
of a clear coast, and seven in the coach, we left 
that city, but soon found ourselves with eleven 
passengers, and other mishaps to follow. We leave 
the Platte five to ten miles to our right, proceed 
northerly about twelve miles from the mountains 
for near eighty miles — then pass the first range of 
mountains, through what are known as the Black 
Hills. The snow ranges, seen from the plains, are 
about sixty to seventy miles beyond the first range, 
though appearing not more than fifteen to twenty 
miles from where we were riding. We could see 
objects more distinctly from our coach upon the 



40 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. . 

side-hills of the mountains fifteen miles distant, 
than you can from the Battery to Staten Island, a 
distance of six miles. Long's Peak, higher than 
Pike's Peak, a hundred miles further south, bore 
about fifteen degrees to the north-west of us at 
eight o'clock in the morning. We were only 
apparently leaving it to the south at six p. m. We 
passed many prairie-dog towns, some of them of 
considerable extent, as had been the case through- 
out the extent of the plains. This is a beautiful 
little animal, an apparent cross between the squirrel 
and the woodchuck. In appearance they resemble, 
in miniature, the sea lion, at the Museum, being 
very symmetrical, well formed and smooth. They 
are graniverous, and are said to be good eating. I 
shall be willing to accept this as hearsay — for it is 
a fact that they live in the same holes with owls and 
rattlesnakes. 

Our entire baggage went under water in fording 
Boulder Creek, and I am now trying to dry my 
shirts in the sun, while writing this on my valise, 
by the side of a hut, surrounded by a dozen or so 
of my disappointed travelling companions. Their 
conversation, 'adventures and jokes, would no doubt 
be more interesting to my readers than what I 
shall write. They at least demand an equal share 
of my attention, and frequent promises that I will 
report them all heroes '' down home." I wish I 
could. 



LARAMIE PARK. 



41 



"We entered the Rocky Mountains through hills 
not difficult of ascent, cut into rugged canons, 
presenting some bold scenery — and after about 
twenty miles, bringing us out upon Laramie 
Plain, one of the most wonderful features hi the 
physical structure of the world. To our right was 
Laramie Peak — to the south, the dim form of 
Meridian Bow Peak — ahead, was the unobstructed 
horizon of an undulating prairie. The distance 
between those two peaks is over three hundred 
miles ; and the basin, here fenced in, almost level, 
upon the very summit of the Rocky Mountains, is 
as large as the State of Connecticut! There are 
several of these plains extending to the southward, 
known as the Korth, South and Middle Park. This 
Park is traversed by several fine water-courses 
running northward. Its hills are more rugged than 
those of the great plains east of the mountains, and 
produce but slight vegetation. The surface is most- 
ly gravel and small stones, making it very severe 
upon the unshod cattle of the emigrant. It has 
been terrifically washed, and is no doubt many 
thousand feet below its original altitude. In places, 
many strata of earth and rock, which have been 
left there alone, assume fantastic and most interest- 
ing shapes. One place, of several miles in circum- 
ference, bore the appearance of a destroyed city. 
Here and there, scattered at romantic distances, 
leaned the shattered columns — projecting cornice — 



42 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

open windows — the clean time -polished sides of 
what it was easy to imagine, were the temples, am- 
phitheatres, and dwellings of an ancient race of 
men. I could only be reminded of the ruins of 
Thebes and Karnak, and almost looked for the hiero- 
glyphic symbols to unfold the history of the par- 
ticular ruin. So with the more rocky portion of 
the hills. Fissures are worn in the vertical strata, 
and columns of granite, supporting capitals, lintels, 
and pediment roof, stand as erect as if placed there 
but yesterday. Silent, solitary, and alone, they 
look like the monasteries of the Andalusian monks, 
built for retirement and seclusion in the mountain 
gorges, — or when more boldly located, like the 
castles of the feudal barons of the middle ages, 
where one sentinel would stand as guard against an 
approaching host. I would give a large price for 
photographic views of some half-dozen places I have 
seen, and am surprised I did not find them in Den- 
ver. The history of the creation of the present 
aspect of these hills has an imaginary interest of 
overpowering sublimity. Back, far back, thou- 
sands upon hundreds of thousands of years, in the 
Devonian period, when perhaps the Rocky Moun- 
tains, the Sierras, and the Apalachian chain, were 
the only land on the North American continent, 
we can well imagine the density of the atmosphere, 
the force of the winds, and the outpouring of 
waters, upon these defiant peaks. Solid pieces of 



SUBLIME SCENERY. 



43 



granite, measuring two hundred thousand cubic 
feet, have been cast headlong and landed by the 
glaciers in the valleys miles away during our day. 
How much more mighty the forces of nature must 
have been, before the physical aspects of the earth 
fitted it for the abode of man ! 

I cannot fail to recount one instance of remark- 
able and ludicrous scenic effect. Everywhere I 
have been — from the White Mountains of New 
Hampshire, through the Middle States, across the 
plains — way up in the Rocky Mountains — and now 
out upon Laramie Park — wherever there is a frown- 
ing rock or projecting surface — that indomitable 
Drake has painted his cabalistic " S. T. 1860 
X — Plantation Bitters." He must be insane if he 
expects to get his expenses back out here — al- 
though wherever I saw anything for sale, his Bit- 
ters formed a part of the stock. I paid $2 50 for 
a bottle on my way from Denver to Central City. 

But these mountain fastnesses, rounded hills, 
dark ravines, and smouldering castles, answer just 
now a different purpose than that of exciting the 
imagination over the beauty of a landscape. They 
afford just the shelter, protection, and communica- 
tion for the Indian, who, in the arts of barbarity 
and savage ferocity, is quite the same as when his 
ancestors committed the massacre of Wyoming. 
Somewhere up here they have, no doubt, four thou- 
sand to six thousand head of stock stolen from the 



4A FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

white emigrants. We had whistled to keep up our 
courage, and tried not to beheve in Indians for some 
time. But evidences accumulated very fast, and 
we were quite willing to keep our escort very near 
us. We were not allowed to travel nights any 
longer. We slept on the earth-floor of the station 
at Cooper Creek, soldiers guarding outside. We 
procured eight mules the next morning, and had 
proceeded six miles, when some horsemen came 
riding down upon us like lightning, crying ' ' In- 
dians." 

Eleven rifles sprang to the windows, and my 
hair sprang to my head ; the coach wheeled about 
so quick as nearly to tip us over — and if we did 
not make a race, I am no judge. We ran our 
mules five miles, until we intercepted an emigrant 
train, and also a company of cavalry. A council of 
war was held ; it was decided to proceed. We 
were forty-four military and twenty civilians strong 
— ^your humble servant the only person seen on 
the route not provided with a Spencer or a Henry's 
rifle ; but I had a revolver, and thought at close 
quarters I could take a hand. The Indians, in turn, 
retreated, but kept on our flanks, and killed one 
poor boy belonging to the military escort, who had 
followed them too far. We recovered his body. 
The diabolical wretches ! — they had stripped him 
entirely of his clothing, dug out his eyes, torn off 
his scalp, opened both his breasts, took out his 



FIGHT WITH THE INDIANS. 45 

heart and entrails — a tribute to his bravery — cut 
off both his feet, cut his head nearly off, and other- 
wise disfigured him — leaving one bullet in his head 
and eight arrows through his body. I have one 
arrow, which I shall carry home. They afterwards 
intercejDted us at the crossing of a gulch and at the 
brow of a hill. We were in for a fight, and drew 
up in line. I felt my day had come, and wished 
myself home. My life is of too much importance 
to others, if not to myself, to throw it away ignobly, 
fighting Indians! I much prefer to be a living 
coward than a dead hero. But there was no re- 
turn — no escape. We approached on a slow trot ; 
got in firing range, the bullets flew from every gun. 
Their leader fell, and our force being large, they 
skedaddled as fast as they could run. They were 
very shrewd, and sent out small parties, endeavor- 
ing to beguile "the whites'^ into some place of am- 
bush, when hundreds of their warriors would have 
sprung upon and hewed us to pieces 1 We did not 
follow. For me, the realizing sense of a whole 
scalp and a pull at my canteen was a great rehef. 
This is only a sample of what is daily occurring. 
Two of our pilgrim companions were killed the 
same day. The stage company is minus horses, 
the government without a tithe of a military force, 
and the people without sufficient to eat. There is 
not force enough here to guard the stations, let 
alone hunting Indians. It will require sixty days 



46 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

to march from the river, and I do not beheve 
things will be safe or in shape mitil one year from 
this time. Ten thousand troops are needed in this 
comitry. Allow no one who sees this to start one 
inch beyond Denver until things are changed. It 
is impossible to guess how long it will be before 
we can get a wagon, horses, or escort, to send us 
on. Were this a through letter, you would not get 
it this summer ; but I shall watch my chance to 
forward it to Denver, and you may receive it. 
Tons of mail are abandoned at the different sta- 
tions. I have seen it, Mr. Halliday, and my name 
is at your service. 



ARRIVAL AT SALT LAKE CITY. <17 



VII. 

Life Among the Mormons — More Indians — The Desert 
— An Ox in a Pit — Kailroad — Beautiful Scenery — 
Mountain Flowers — Salt Lake City — Mormons — 
Polygamy — Brigham Young. 

Great Salt Lake City, July 7, 1865. 

There is no disguising the fact, I am not in good 
humor. Nine days and nights jolting and pounding 
over the most wretched of roads, arriving here ten 
days behind time, finding no letters, and telegraphic 
communication cut off for three weeks, slightly 
disconcert me, interferes with my arrangements, 
impel me onward, and will cut my letters short. 
The Indians killed three instead of one man the 
day of our encounter near Wagon Hound Canon. 
The supposition is they have been getting ready 
for a heavy onslaught and cleaning out in that sec- 
tion, as they did for a stretch of over two hundred 
miles east of Denver last winter and spring. The 
following day the fortunate arrival of a small squad 
of soldiers from Laramie induced the stage to try 
and work east. About four hundred to five hun- 
dred Indians disputed their passage ; sixty mounted 
cavalry and two hundred armed pilgrims dared not 



48 FBOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

attack them, and all put back to the best base they 
could obtain — the stage to our station. We deem 
ourselves most fortunate in having safely run the 
gauntlet of these fellows. This was only eighteen 
miles from where we lay cooped up for two days, 
thirteen sleeping on the one floor of a small cabin, 
without horses to carry us on, or soldiers to defend 
us. Reports were that the Indians were moving 
towards us. We placed our sentinels at dusk, put 
out our hght, and waited the morning with an 
anxiety I had never before experienced. Each 
man's gun had been overhauled, and, with extra 
cartridges, lay by his side. I alone had but a 
pistol. All realized that another morning to any 
of our little band was very uncertain. Things 
were serious. As I stealthily took from my pocket 
and wistfully gazed upon the pictures of my dear 
and loved ones that were far away, and whose 
faces I might never again behold, the reminis- 
cences of the past came crowding before me awaken- 
ing holy and emotional thoughts, that made sleep 
impossible and the hours long. My mother, my 
wife, and my little Cora visibly stood before me, 
and with outstretched arms and beseeching looks 
implored and begged me to return. I could hardly 
contain my speech. It seemed as if I must jump 
from this mountain solitude to the borders of civili- 
zation at a single bound. Towards the second 
morning a stage with two passengers, four soldiers 



RELIEF. 49 

and two drivers, came rolling in from the west — 
the first for several days. Never was voice of 
man more welcome. I breathed freer, and as day 
dawned our force strengthened and danger lessened ; 
it was wonderful how soon the fears of the past 
were forgotten, and how rapidly the mind engaged 
in new plans for the future. Morally speaking, I 
believe men are in earnest when they resolve to 
change their habits of hfe ; but their sincerity pro- 
ceeds from a cause — fear, weakness, or disappoint- 
ment : remove the cause and the original instincts 
will prevail, and former habits be reinstated. 

We spent all of the next day in trying to coax, 
hire, or scare the driver into a trial trip. It all 
seemed useless ; but money is very powerful, and 
by sundown we had succeeded in securing nine 
soldiers and two drivers, and started on our way 
westward. A very consoling idea to a driver, that 
he must have another man on the box with him, 
that in case he gets shot some one can take the 
lines ! Singular that mountaineers consider night 
the safest time to avoid Indian attacks. 

Right there, say twenty-five miles east of the 
North Platte, commences the desert in earnest 
From the Platte west to Fort Bridger, two hundred 
miles, is one almost uninterrupted panorama of 
barren hills, sandy plains, ugly tortuous ravines, 
and blank desolation. Patches of wild sage, re- 
jected by animals, is the only sign of vegetation 



50 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

that meets the eye. I looked industriously, and 
am willing to qualify that, except at Pine Grove, a 
little oasis, I did not see a half acre of good, bad, 
or indifferent grazing all this distance. How the 
poor cattle, mules, and horses of the trains and 
pilgrims manage to exist is a problem. It seems 
to me that thousands must perish. All life, and all 
living things, seem to be gone. Stillness, desolation, 
and the elements reign. It appears like Idumea 
and Petrea, with God's curse that it shall not be 
inhabited by man. The rains descend, but the 
parched earth puts forth no vine ; the mornings 
come, but, silent as the evening, no raven flies the 
air ; we behold the watercourses, but we hear not 
the murmurings of the fountains. The Sahara can 
only be more desolate in size — not in quality. It 
was a Sunday morning — the mules at the station 
had got loose, and wandered over the sand hills. 
While in search of them I came across an abrupt 
ditch five or six feet deep, and of the same width, 
which had been dug out by some recent torrent. 
Following its serpentine course, I found a large ox, 
which venturing too near had probably fallen in, 
and was now lying upon his side in such a cramped 
position that he could not help himself. Poor fel- 
low — he had belonged to some emigrant train, and 
disappearing in this way could not be found, and 
would surely have died in a short time more. We 
brought grain and water from the station — excav- 



RIVERS. 51 

ated the side of the ditch at a convenient point — 
got a rope round his horns, drew him to the proper 
place, and finally succeeded in getting him out. 
How long he had lain there, and where his com- 
panions were, we could not tell ; we had performed 
the Bible's teachings of pulling the ox from the pit 
upon the Sabbath day. 

It seems to me we ascend as much as we descend 
from the eastern range here. Since we left Denver 
we have not been out of sight of snow, which lasts 
the season through, and now lies within six miles 
of Salt Lake City. Strange to say, we have not 
yet crossed any severe hills. The grading of a rail- 
road, in my opinion, would require less engineering 
skill than it has on the Erie, Pennsylvania, or Bal- 
timore and Ohio roads. 

The North Platte, the Green, the Bear, the 
Weber rivers, and several others, are fine streams, 
crossed by rope ferries, when not fordable — which is 
generally the case — for which the modest price of 
seven dollars a team is charged. Crossing from the 
Valley of the Bitter Creek to Grieen River, we pass 
the finest geological formation and most sublime 
mountain scenery upon which the eye of man ever 
rested. The whole mountain range appears to be 
of secondary formation — the top stratum of red and 
the lower of white sandstone. It is still in course 
of decomposition, and the elementary changes, ap- 
parently recent, are most novel, startling, pictu- 



52 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

resque, and grand. White granulated sandstone, 
with inclined sides five hundred feet high, support 
towering promontories of red stone of equal or 
greater height — perpendicular as a plummet, smooth 
in some instances, corrugated in others, and level 
upon their tops — the seams of the lower stratum 
running horizontal, while those of the upper are 
vertical. Alive in the sunlight and dreamy in their 
shadows for a thousand feet above our heads, they 
awaken the mind to a conception of the vastness of 
nature, and carry us back to the time when seas were 
surging their fury and mountains were lashed into 
these romantic resting places. We can picture forts, 
towns, castles, parapets, battlements — the Ghebers 
cliffs where the Fire Worshippers hailed the rising 
sun, or Oman's turrets, where daring Haffed '' sought 
the gory vulture's nest, but found the trembling 
Hin da's bower," or anything which history suggests 
or the imagination inspires — grand — wonderful — 
sublime. 

I was quite sure I should find photographic views 
of such wonderful beauties, but am again disap- 
pointed. Some artists went from here last season 
to Echo Canon, and will this year proceed to this 
place. 

On the very highest passes of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, say nine thousand feet high, I collected beau- 
tiful and compact marine fossils — salt-water shells, 
great solid hills almost wholly composed of the evi- 



WESTERN SLOPE. 53 

deuces of former sea life ! At another station nearly 
as high, I took specimens of bituminous coal from 
veins six and eight feet thick. 

At Fort Bridger, one hundred and eighty miles 
north-east of Salt Lake City, we commence to see 
vegetation, and in the foot hills composing the val- 
ley between the Utah and Wind River Mountains, 
are some fine grazing lands. About a half dozen 
varieties of the genus larkspur here abound ; some 
of them are very beautiful. They are of all shades 
and colors, but yellow always predominating — more 
compact than the larkspur and more brilliant and 
delicate than the delphinum formoseum. These 
and the mountain cactus, before referred to, are 
the only flowers yet noticed that I would recom- 
mend to naturalize. 

At Bear River we meet the first Mormons. They 
increase from here on. The farmers universally live 
in little one-story log or adobe houses, covered with 
poles and earth. I must say, they are much supe- 
rior as a class to the habitations of the pioneers of 
Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri. 

The celebrated Echo Canon, say sixty miles east 
of this, where the Mormons once fortified to resist 
the United States forces, has high, precipitous, and 
sometimes overhanging red sandstone rock, on one 
side ranging from two hundred to six hundred feet ; 
on the other, receding hills. It is not extraordinary. 
At its foot we strike the Weber river and the Mor- 



54 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

mon village of Chalk Rock. Beautiful small farms, 
all irrigated. Wheat and garden vegetables, no 
more forward this 7th of July than in Jersey on 
l€th of May ; the chances of great success I do not 
look upon as bright. We rode in a heavy frost 
and severe cold the preceding night. Now comes 
thirty miles of the worst and most dangerous gully 
road, and the highest overlapping hills we have 
yet encountered. It was in the night. There was 
hardly room for the coach to pass the glazed rock 
on one side and keep the wheel on the narrow path 
beneath. Several times we had to get out to assist 
the coach. Had we made a misstep and tipped 
over, we should have landed among the jagged 
rocks and in a rolUng torrent below — probably not 
in a condition to have penned this letter. 

Just as the sun kissed the southern hills we 
emerged from the mountains, and looked down 
upon a beautiful extended plain, fifteen by thirty 
miles, and upon one border, some seven miles 
distant, stood the sleeping city of the prophet. 
Houses half hid amid dark green foliage, with curling 
smoke arising therefrom — not a spire to remind us 
of an American city — made a picture, soft, mellow, 
peculiar, and beautiful. As we approach we find 
the trees principally peach and apple, with a burden 
of fruit I have never seen equalled. The houses are 
almost all of large size, brick or '' adoW^ — the 
natural color of which is a fine, bright blue slate — 



SALT LAKE CITY. 55 

usually one story, but varying to two as with us. 
They all have high, prominent chimneys, and on 
large houses there are several. Some are plas- 
tered and painted — an additional beauty. The 
blocks are six hundred and fifty feet square, or over 
three times those from Fourteenth to Fifteenth 
streets, in New York. The streets are two hundred 
feet wide, crossing each other at right angles, with 
a running stream of irrigating water either on one 
side or both sides. The houses do not stand close 
together. The city might probably measure two 
miles in diameter ; and while they claim 15,000 
inhabitants, I cannot give them over 10,000 — 
although of this it is not safe for me, a Gentile, to 
judge, for I am satisfied children and water are the 
principal crops of Mormon production. There are 
a few as fine stores as anywhere in the country, an 
immense theatre and court-house, two banks, three 
papers — two Mormon, one Gentile ; a tabernacle 
church that will seat 2,500 (a new one building 
that will seat 10,000), and several — they say twenty 
— good public school-houses, the support of which, 
as with us, is effected by a general tax — rather a 
sorry consolation for rich bachelors. 

Just think of it, ye celibate Josephs — shelling 
out your greenbacks to educate some poor scoun- 
drel's children. And supposing the name of those 
children's mother was Calanthia, who, years gone 
by, jilted you in favor of the dancing clerk with the 



56 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

curiing mustache, whom you always so abominably 
abhorred ! Bah ! what an ugly world. 

Next to Jerusalem, Salt Lake City, away off in 
the centre of a vast continent, had seemed to me 
the most enchanting city in the world. I exceed- 
ingly regret that my Indian delays have cut my 
time so short as to limit my information respecting 
population, productions, civil codes, religious habits, 
social customs, etc. To come so far, stand so many- 
jolts and scares, and stay but a day, is quite un- 
satisfactory. But I must leave San Francisco, by 
steamer, 1st of August, and I have much to do. 

To the casual observer these people appear har- 
monious, polite, affable, and prosperous to a great 
degree. Their poor are cared for in a most praise- 
worthy manner. Liquor is not allowed to be sold 
in the city. The proportion of criminal convic- 
tions is small. Their system of government is not, 
as I had supposed, a hierarchy, but republican. 
Brigham Young, the President of the Cliurch, is 
purely an ecclesiastical ruler, and has no authority 
whatever in civil affairs. First marriages, as with 
us, are optional with the parties, and may be per- 
formed by any officiating priest. Second and fur- 
ther marriages, anywhere in the territory, can only 
be performed by the President himself, and after 
such personal knowledge or statements from the 
local priests as justifies the belief of good moral 
character and ability to support the duplicate wife 



POLYGAMY. 57 

and children, and with the sanction of all previous 
wives, either by their vohmtary written consent, or, 
when admissible, by personal attendance and affirm- 
ative answer at the time of the ceremony. The 
power of divorce also lies with the church. The 
men claim great sanctity of purpose and much per- 
sonal inconvenience and expense in supporting 
several families instead of one. Where they mul- 
tiply too fast, and the means will admit, each wife 
has her own establishment ; but more frequently 
they all live together. They say the natural effect 
is to produce a larger number of children — an aver- 
age of eight to a married female of thirty — a con- 
siderable preponderance being females. Nothing 
in the apparent physical or intellectual develop- 
ment of the youth or children indicates immaturity 
or decay. As to the principles of Mormonism, 
they are made for men. The women are timid and 
recluse, do not support many elegancies, or appear 
as the equals of men. You cannot catch the eye 
of the few females seen in the streets ; and, singu- 
larly enough, I have not seen one who could lay 
the least claim to beauty. They are coarse and 
menial. In calling upon an old acquaintance of my 
boyhood, who had long ago embraced their faith, 
and whose house and condition are good, he did not 
introduce me to either of the three women in the 
room, all of whom I took to be his wives. I noticed 
he was called father by four hearty children be- 



58 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

tween the ages of three and six, while several 
smaller ones were kicking about, and how many 
more were in the cribs or out of doors I durst not 
venture to guess. I knew the delicate, high-spir- 
ited lady of his first love, whom he deserted for 
this harem life, and could but mark the contrast 
in the development of those emotional sentiments 
which, say what we may, constitute the only real 

happiness of life. If Miss Margarette B e, of 

Medina, N. Y., ever sees these lines, she will learn 

the present position of J S . 

IS'otwithstanding the evident physical and moral 
prosperity of this community up to this time, I 
cannot believe but that a general system of poly- 
gamy would retard civilization and work the down- 
fall of any advanced nation. What can there be 
in such a divided relation to stimulate the pride, 
gratify the hope, or reward the affection, of a 
woman ? Love, the great stimulant to all that is 
good, beautiful, and holy, in the human breast, 
gratified by proper attention for a brief period, 
then fanned by jealousy, crushed by desertion, and 
finally insulted by beholding the attentions to which 
its rightful possessor was entitled lavished upon 
another ; and not only must the skies become dark- 
ened and the world a blank, but life loses its aim — 
the mind becomes morbid — material ends are neg- 
lected — children are not cared for — maternal love 
is not developed — death is a relief, and society is 



BRIGHAM YOUNG. 59 

cursed in a rising generation without hearts. The 
present weakness of the Mormons is their strength. 
Brigham Young is very capable, and, although with- 
out any legislative authority, has sufficient moral 
power to control all legislation, and is, in fact, an 
autocrat. While he or his successors have the 
wisdom to be temperate, charitable, and devoted, 
with the power to control and make themselves 
appear in the light of martyrs for conscience' sake, 
I can realize how their followers may, in the main, 
be zealously honest — how men may preserve their 
ambition, and how women may sing praises with 
broken hearts. So long as inferiority of numbers, 
and financial and political weakness, exist among the 
Mormons, creating natural circumspection among 
their rulers, and a toleration toward others, and 
the elements of schismatic strength are not great 
enough to induce internal dissensions ; I do not see 
why they may not flourish and prosper. But give 
them strength, power, and the contact of natural 
society, and they must decay with great rapidity. 

President Young has from forty to fifty wives — 
exactly how many I could not ascertain. Some of 
them, old and widowed, he married for force of 
example — merely to give them the right of his sup- 
port ; and I am told, some of them he has never 
seen since the marriage or sealing ceremony. His 
premises, consisting of ten acres, are surrounded 
by a twelve-feet "wall, and, besides his principal 
house — in which reside about six of his young 



60 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

wives — contain the tithing house of the territory, 
a chapel, and his private school-house, in which are 
now some seventy of his own children. He is a 
hale, hearty man of sixty-four years ; perfectly 
temperate in all things — uses neither spirits, to- 
bacco, tea, nor coffee ; exemplary, democratic, and 
liberal. Being uneducated, his sermons are big- 
oted, zealous, direct, and tautological. He owns a 
vast property in real estate, interests in stores, 
manufactories, Eastern stocks, etc. He is the owner 
of the Salt Lake Hotel, the house where this is 
being penned. A lady informed me that she once 
saw him order forty velvet bonnets, all alike — an 
evidence of his impartiality, no doubt — but what a 
luxury, at thirty dollars apiece, it would be to a 
poor man ! 

The great temple, which is to seat ten thousand 
persons, and advance pictures of which have been 
sent throughout the world, is now only built to the 
basement story. A canal, twelve miles long, is 
being constructed to transport the granite of which 
it is to be built, and which is the only granite I 
have seen through all the Rocky Mountain range. 

I had not time to visit Salt Lake, and bathe 
in its dense waters. It is eight miles distant 
from the city. It is four thousand seven hundred 
feet above the ocean, receives the waters of several 
large streams flowing from all directions, and has 
no outlet. Its water is the most saline in the 
world, and contains one-third pure salt. 



MINERALS. 61 

There are said to be fine silver discoveries near 
here. Representative Ashley, Chairman of Terri- 
tories in Congress, arrived a few days before me, 
and urges me to visit Rush Valley and the diggings 
with him. I obtained specimens for future use, 
and am compelled to forego a more thorough ex- 
amination. From the scarcity of wood, I doubt if 
mining can be made profitable here, although that 
will not prevent the trial. The Mormons endeavor 
to suppress any knowledge of the existence of min- 
erals ; but the soldiers and the Yankees have been 
here ; the facts are known, the Gentiles are coming, 
and the Mormons will either have to migrate again 
or abandon polygamy and adapt themselves to the 
usages of American civilization. President Young 
is absent, as I understand, on a tour of discovery 
for a new Mecca. 

A one day's sojourn is quite inadequate to collect 
sufficient data upon which to speculate, but the 
main physical features are as here presented, and 
the progress made is greater than I have observed 
elsewhere in my travels, with double the time and 
advantages in favor of other people and localities. 
But the high, pure mission of lovely woman, the 
incentive to man's ambition and his happiness, is 
gone, and the prosperity of man founded upon 
the degradation of woman I hope cannot exist — 
although the ways of Providence are marvellous 
to man. 



62 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 



VIII. 

More about Salt Lake City — Leaving the City — Eiver 
Jordan — Ruins of Camp Floyd — Appearance of the 
Country — Indian Lovers — Digger Indians — A Moun- 
tain Maid. 

Austin, Nevada, July 14, 1865. 

My last was left in private hands at Salt Lake 
City, to be worked through overland, if possible. 

The estimate of the Mormon population in the 
entire valley at 100,000 is about correct. The 
advantage which the settlement of that half-way 
house in the deserts of America has been to the 
people of the United States, is incalculable. Prices 
of everything consumable advance with terrific 
rapidity as you leave either coast, until met by the 
productions of Salt Lake Yalley, where we find 
flour, oats, barley, potatoes, fowls, beeves, salt, 
garden vegetables, etc., in abundance, and at rea- 
sonable prices. The salvation of Mormonism, as 
an institution, depends upon its isolation, a fact 
which the apostles well understand. Under the 
circumstances, they treat the Gentiles with much 
toleration. The soldiers stationed near the city 
publish a daily paper — the Vidette — strongly aiiti- 



MORMON PROGRESS. C3 

Mormon, but which circulates by the side of their 
own papers, the Telegraph and the News. They 
discourage the development of the mineral wealth 
in their vicinity. 

It is not for me to discuss theories, but simply 
to state facts. It would be unjust in me not to say 
that the progress of the Mormons in agriculture, 
manufacturing, and general development is im- 
mense, their physical comforts many, while ancient 
Nineveh alone, of all the cities of the world, could 
rival theirs in beauty. 

Still further developments are to be made. Re- 
ferring to the map, you will see that the Gulf of 
California and the Colorado river, receiving their 
first waters far to the north and east of this section, 
must ultimately invite transportation that way. 
Vessels will then lay their freight down from New 
York as cheaply at the head of the gulf as they 
now do at San Francisco. I understand steam- 
boats can now be run within three hundred and 
fifty miles south of the city, which may still be les- 
sened. It was a great mistake on the part of the 
United States in the Gadsden treaty, not to have 
secured the line across the head of this gulf. A 
large city is destined to flourish there, and its 
destiny must be American. Perhaps the change of 
a few degrees of boundary at that time might have 
saved us another Mexican or a French war. Young 
men, here is your place. 



64 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

I am again seated in the stage at noon of my 
second day, and leave Salt Lake City with regret. 
Crossing the plains to the south on a perfectly 
straight road, I ^ could, with my glass, look up the 
street I had left, and locate buildings in the city 
fifteen miles off. 

We are all this distance upon a thickly populated 
road, with irrigated farms on either side. As 
before remarked, the houses are mostly one-story, 
adohe. We soon reach and follow the river Jordan 
for a few miles, crossing it at a width of one 
hundred feet and a depth of two to three feet. I 
quenched my thirst in its rapid and pure waters, 
and filled my canteen for future use. It runs from 
Utah Lake into Salt Lake, the latter of which has 
no outlet. At Camp Floyd, or Fort Johnson or 
Crittenden, as it is variously called, forty miles 
from the city, we turn westward, but not before 
recalling the memories of destroyed cities and 
deserted houses, which the power of armies or the 
devastation of earthquakes have pictured in our 
imagination. This place had been the principal 
Government depot and station for a vast extent of 
country during the Mormon war. From seventy- 
five to one hundred acres of land were covered 
with adobe houses, barracks, arsenals, corrals, etc. 
Streams had run through the wide streets, the stars 
and stripes had floated from the pole upon the 
main plaza — life, gayety, and music had charmed the 



A DESERTED CITY. 65 

sojourner, and added romance to the scene. Alas ! 
how changed. All are gone. Roofs have fallen in, 
ends tumbled out, sides broken, windows without 
glass, the waters dried up, the pole flagless, the' 
music hushed — not a man, beast, or dog to greet 
you ; all as still and silent as the tomb. Thebes in 
its sand, and the Pyramids in their solitude, could 
not be more desolate. The broken walls looming 
against the evening sky awakened musings long to 
be remembered, and only broken by the crack of 
the driver's whip and the rattling wheels of the 
coach, as they rolled us on our course. 

The physical characteristics of the next five hun- 
dred miles, from Salt Lake to the Sierra Nevada 
Mountains in California, will be best understood by 
comparing the country to a vast sea, interspersed 
with ridges of towering islands. About fifteen 
miles of undulating plain, then comes a chain of 
hills — five to ten miles across, and twenty to one 
hundred miles long — running north and south, and 
but few of them presenting any life or vegetation. 
Some we cross through not difficult passes, or 
canons ; from others we diverge in course of time 
and pass around. Sufficient of them are snow- 
capped to allow me to say, that since we ap- 
proached the Rocky Mountains, on the eastern 
side, we have not yet been out of sight of snow. 
I say this country is a vast plain, although about 
one- tenth of its surface is rugged mountain ; for. 



66 > FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

between the ranges looking up and down, the 
horizon is unbroken, and the mind cannot over- 
come a feehng that just beyond that particular hill, 
to the east or west, all is level again. The plains 
are mostly desert. They afford very little grazing. 
For thirty to fifty miles, emigrants, stages, etc., 
have to carry all the water they require, and for 
several hundred miles provisions have at all times 
to be drawn from each end. Forage there is none. 

The course of true love is said never to run 
smooth. A pretty young squaw attracted my 
attention at one of the stations. By her side was 
Willow-Spring Bill. Both were silent. At the 
next station, fifteen miles further on, we saw Egan 
Howard, lying dead and stiff, his head well smashed 
to pieces. It appears that Howard wanted the 
squaw, and not succeeding in her worthy father's 
favor, he watched his opportunity and killed the 
old man ; whereupon Willow-Spring, being a friend 
of the father, and probably not an enemy of the 
daughter, had this morning retaliated. No one 
cared. The Indian lookers-on enjoyed the fun, and 
did not offer to bury Howard. 

Speaking of Indians — of all the filthy, stolid, 
degraded wretches I ever saw or heard of, these 
different tribes of the Diggers are the worst. They 
live on mice, grasshoppers, lizzards, snakes, seeds, 
roots, and what they can beg of the white travel- 
lers. They infest every station. They sleep flat 



DIGGER INDIANS. 67 

on the ground without even a stone or a brush 
covermg. They cultivate nothing. Their clothing, 
beyond beads and moccasins, is literally nothing ex- 
cept what the few whites throw away. They present 
the most grotesque appearance imaginable. There 
were half a hundred collected at Kingston yesterday. 
Their hair is excessively thick, low on the forehead, 
long, coarse, bushy, and black — so much is nature's 
dress. Add to this simply an old vest to one, a 
single shoe to another, a part of an old coat or the 
waist of a dress to a third, one-half of a pair of 
drawers to another, a part of a blanket, an old 
shawl, or a cofFee-sack upon others ; while one big 
fellow had nothing under heaven on his person but 
a tow string around his waist, and some not even 
that ; while others, whose luck in gambling had 
turned that way, sported two old coats and no 
pants — and you have a fair and true description of 
these miserable creatures, whom pea-hjeaded* mis- 
sionaries are trying to teach the Bible. Bah ! non- 
sense ! They are not human. Among all the 
aborigines who have inhabited this continent since 
its discovery by Columbus, no one has shown suffi- 
cient genius to stamp himself upon the progress of 
the world. They have disappeared before the vices 
of civilization as fast as they have traversed from 
the East across the Western wilderness, like dew 
before the morning sun. They see the whites 
build huts and plant potatoes ; they sleep upon the 



68 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

frozen ground and eat reptiles. They learn nothing, 
do nothing, but starve and freeze. Plenty of work 
is offered them in the mines, but they will not 
work. The Howard and Willow-Spring Bill, above 
referred to, belonged to different tribes. The 
method of gambling, which I here saw, was to 
pitch gravel stones into holes ; the stakes — each 
other's clothes ; and I candidly aver that I saw 
one wearing three vests and a full suit, while the 
fellow with whom he was playing was reduced to 
one leg of an old drawer ! 

Just as we enter Nevada we cross the Egan Hills 
by a canon of the same name. Some valuable 
silver mines are now just opening, and quite an 
excitement prevails. I secured some specimens, 
heard the statements, and reserved my opinion until 
better able to express it fully and comprehensively. 
Here is the first approach to what may be called 
trees, since we left the east side of the Rocky 
Mountains. A kind of scrub cedar grows up in 
the gorges that will average about as much wood 
as a New York orchard of twenty years' growth — 
not more. Wood is the great want of this country. 
Around Austin they say it is plenty a little way 
back, I know better. I have been "back," across, 
and all round. It does not exist. 

Here, too, at Egan, I got a splendid breakfast — 
waited upon by a perfect beauty of a black-eyed 
girl. Her house was tidy, mountain-flower bouquets 



A HiaHLAND LASS. 69 

upon the table, standard authors upon the rude 
shelves, carpets upon the earth floor, and she, 
refined, light, and bright as a bird. Of all the 
superb scenes of nature which I have witnessed 
smce my departure, none can compare to a pretty 
woman in such a place as this. She deserves a 
better position, and, if I mistake not, the gallant 
driver who carried us away from the place will give 
one to her. Should this just tribute to the winning 
graces of this mountain gazelle, whose charms cap- 
tivate even with a plate of johnny-cake in her hand, 
meet her eye, I wonder what the httle beauty 
will say. 

Austin (Reese River District), the great silver 
section of the country, requires study, comparison, 
and investigation, which I shall transmit in my 
next. This goes by San Francisco and steamer. 



70 FBOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 



IX. 



Stage Companions — Mining — Mills, Wood, and Wateb 
AT Austin — Eeese Kiveb. 

Virginia City, Nevada, July 16. 

I SUPPOSE there is little doubt in the minds of my 
readers by this time that I am the friend of the 
ladies. I own the soft impeachment, and am will- 
ing to make myself very uncomfortable at all times 
for their benefit ; but, at the expense of my gal- 
lantry, I must say there are places where crinoline 
is out of order and babies become a downright nui- 
sance ! I supposed I was to be the only passenger 
from Salt Lake on ; but upon starting, I found 
myself vis-a-vis with a grass widow and four chil- 
dren under eight years of age^ — as my companions. 
Each had a specific want at least once in twenty 
minutes, which divided by four, gave me a gentle 
hint exactly every five minutes. A stage coach, 
down gullies, over stones, up hills, and across 
ravines, is not the most favorable place imaginable 
for sound sleep. The first night — each one clam- 
bering for the soft place and crying over the acci- 
dental thumps, assisted by the gentle raps and kicks 
of the mother, who insisted upon their keeping per- 



STAGE COMPANIONS. 71 

fectly still, and occasionally asking the gentleman 
if he would not reach the canteen or open the bas- 
ket — was charming to a man who had six full days 
of sleep owing to him. 

The next day the children were covered with 
molasses and the stage with crumbs ; and if you 
have never been her^, I will inform you that dust, 
deep and thick, is the staple production of this 
country. Our condition is more easily imagined 
than described. When night came again I wrenched 
off the middle seat, piled in mail bags, blankets, and 
shawls, and spooned them in. They were so well 
tired out, I heard nothing of them until morning. 
But the woman — dear me ! — not gifted with Eve's 
gentle confidence, posted herself upright in the fur- 
ther corner, and insisted she would not sleep a 
wink all night ; and I think she would have de- 
clared she had kept her word had I not had to 
climb out for her lost bonnet once or twice. The 
Lord forgive her awful suspicions ! 

I do not propose to speak fully of minerals^ 
mining, and the comparative value of the different 
sections I visit, until I have visited all. I find pre- 
conceived opinions upon the subject liable to great 
modification ; and I fear that I am rapidly getting 
in opposition to most of my friends at home as well 
as here, as to the ultimate profit of working mines. 

As I remarked in regard to Colorado, there is no 
question in regard to the existence of large quantities 



72 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

of silver ore at this point, or of the fabulous amount 
which is sometimes taken from a ton of ore. The 
blind man and the speculator are satisfied with this 
show, but it is right here that intelligent inquiry 
commences — the width of the vein — its uniformity 
— its location — the kind of ore — the necessary 
manner of treating it — the expense of wood — 
amount of water — cost of forage, living, etc., must 
be arrived at, the most of which cannot be done in 
advance, and the only thing certain is, that you can 
spend a big pile of money whether you get much 
back or not ; and further than this — in a country 
so awfully barren and unproductive as this — where 
not a kernel of a corn or a spire of grass is raised — 
one cannot stand still. The cost of mere existence 
is an immense outlay, and compels a person to 
move. The silver ores of this section produce less 
per ton than the ores of Austin ; wood is eighteen 
dollars per cord here, and there it is ten dollars ; 
yet these ores being free from galena, pyrites, sul- 
phurets, etc., can be worked at much greater profit 
than there. Where there is no water power, and 
wood at these prices has to be burnt for steam and 
for roasting the ores, it costs something. The lodes 
near Austin vary from six to twenty inches wide at 
a depth of one hundred and fifty feet. Here the 
Comstock lode is seventy-five feet wide. The books 
show that over fourteen thousand lodes have been 
located in the vicinity of Virginia City — while there 



AUSTIN MINES. 



73 



is just one that is now being worked. All the 
mines are on the Comstock lode. Inexperienced 
men cannot tell the difference. Lodes which look 
as well, and produce specimens which assay finely, 
are held at high figures, and have broken many 
owners. Fifty thousand dollars asked for a lode 
which really can be bought for a breakfast, is a wide 
discrepancy, but I think there are many such. 

Mill-masters at Austin will tell you they can 
crush 1,500 lbs. of ore in twenty-four hours per 
stamp ; that the product will run $100 to $150 per 
ton, and that the expenses all told, mining, haul- 
ing, and crushing, will not be over $50 to $60 per 
ton. A ten stamp mill, like most of those here, 
will cost say $20 to $40. This looks like immense 
profits ; but there is a hitch somewhere, for in all 
this district there are but five mills — forty- five 
stamps — in operation, while the Eagle, Pioneer, 
Union, the Clifton, and others are not running. 
Those in operation are the Oregon with 10 stamps ; 
Ware, 5 ; California, 10 ; Rhode Island or Hildreth, 
5 ; Midas, 15 ; and this is all there is of the boasted 
Reese River, Austin, Amidor, or Bunker Hill min- 
ing region, where 7,300 lodes have actually found 
purchasers. My fortune in mines commences to 
dwindle. It is singular that I find no one else who 
is not hopeful — yes, sanguine. These ^yq mills 
have in two years consumed all the wood for twenty 
miles. What would 1,000 stamps do, providing 



74 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

the experiment could be tried for a year ? Wood 
would have to be brought from the Sierras 200 
miles distant, and would cost $50 per cord. Water 
is quite as scarce, and all there is in Austin would 
pass through a napkin ring. 

Two valleys, fifteen miles wide, running north 
and south, the Reese River Valley on the west and 
the Big Smoky Yalley on the east, enclose the 
Touyeba mountains, say eight miles across ; some 
of the peaks have perpetual snow. On the west 
slope, in a canon six miles up, is located Austin, 
with a dashing population of near five thousand. 
Here were first discovered the silver lodes, and from 
Reese River, as it is called, ten miles away in the 
valley — a little stream of only about twenty-four 
inches of water, which all disappears some distance 
below — it is known as the Reese River District. 
But upon the eastern slope of the range there have 
been subsequent discoveries made of veins outcrop- 
ping from four to twenty feet wide and equally 
rich with Austin. Here are located the Astor, 
Starr King, Bunker Hill, Barnes, Sloan, Central 
Park, Bowling G-reen, Broadway, Union Square, 
Brooklyn, and other valuable lodes, and with con- 
siderable water-power. At Kingston, thirty-five 
miles distant, the Sterling Company, of which Mar- 
cellus Massey, Esq., of Brooklyn, is President, is 
now erecting a stone mill with twenty stamps and 
capacity of forty, the only water mill in the district, 
and the best of any description in the territory, 



BETTER LIVING. 75 

unless it may be the Gould and Curry at Yirginia. 
I examined the surroundings of this country with 
great particularity, as my shoeless horse will testify ; 
and if Kingston, Bassfords Canon, the Keedles, 
Geneva, etc., do not soon acquire a name and 
reputation, then no lodes can in Nevada. I am so 
largely indebted to W. S. Duncan, Esq., of. Austin, 
and M. J. Noyes, Esq., of Kingston, for courtesies 
during my sojourn, that I cannot refrain from 
tendering my thanks. I hope that my fellow- 
travellers may share a like hospitable reception. 

You see I am leaving this place unfinished as I 
intend. My pen will undoubtedly return here. 

One might better travel in Europe for news. I 
am near six weeks out. My latest from New York 
is June 15th. As I am now about twenty-four 
hours from San Francisco, luxuriating on pears, 
grapes, apricots, peaches, melons, etc., I feel it is 
more hke home. Set it down as certain I have 
eaten one good meal. This jolting in stages, 
climbing mountain passes, descending into mines, 
collecting specimens, examining mills, comparing 
ores, collecting statistics, overhauling maps, talk- 
ing with everybody, and then writing to numerous 
correspondents all night, does not make this a trip 
of leisure to me, but nevertheless quite in my line. 
I propose to sleep a week steadily after I get on 
board the steamer, and dream of my dear friends, 
far, far away, in their Eastern homes. May the 
time speed, is the wish of the subscriber. 



76 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 



X. 



Keliable Information — Washoe — Nevada — Virginia 
City — A New Driver — In Difficulty. 

Virginia City, July 17. 

It is very difficult to obtain reliable information 
in this section of the world. The population is 
largely made up of adventurers, and every man 
seems to have an interest in favor of or adverse to 
everything and every place. I have made it a 
point to ride at least one station with each driver 
who has carried us along. Passing through some 
rugged mountains, the driver remarked : 

" Sound silver lodes in here." 

"" But I do not observe any water or wood for 
working the ore, however rich it may be." 

"Oh! plenty wood back on the range; deliver 
here at $3 a cord." 

" How far back ?" 

'' Some ten or twelve miles." 

"But I should think it would be worth more 
than this to haul it over mountain canons, provid- 
ing it cost nothing to preempt or cut ?" 

" We haul five cords to a load ; that's nothing.' 



LONG WAGONS. 77 

'^ I should think such loads would tip over on the 
hill-sides." 

'' We only pile it on three feet high." 

"You must require very long reaches ; how long 
are your wagons ?" 

*' Fifty feet ; d d inquisitive/' was his laconic 

reply. 

He relapsed into silence, and not another word 
could I get out of him the balance of the trip. 

So my source of information had dried up for 
the time being. I can give the very best of refer- 
ence in the vicinity of Wall street, that this man- 
ner of stating things is not confined to the West. 
dear, deluded, gullible New Yorkers! if I 
should whisjDcr to you a hundredth part of the 
schemes — as baseless as Mrs. Caxton's brother's 
(Uncle Jack's) coal mines — upon which your finan- 
cial hopes are anchored, how you would tremble 
in your shoes, and how anxious you would be to re- 
turn to your yardsticks and your lapstones ! But, 
as I have remarked before, I shall let you down 
easy, and only partially refer to the underground 
view of mining in reality. But when I see mag- 
nificent buildings, with two hundred horse-power 
engines, and scores of men pegging away for five 
years, seven hundred feet down on the ledge, and 
never a pound of "pay" rock, the temptation is 
irresistible to inform somebody that investments 
in the "Morning Star," " Anchor of Hope," etc., at 



78 FKOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

two thousand dollars a foot, might as well be 
looked after. If I was in that business, how I 
would like to take a line of " shorts." It is much 
the safest way, however, if a man will gamble, to 
go straight to a faro bank. He will save much 
time, and will know a great deal better how the 
thing is done. 

This is generally supposed to be the richest sil- 
ver mining district in the world. It is known as 
Washoe, located in Nevada, on the ea^ern slope 
of the Sierra Nevadas, nearly six thousand feet 
above the sea. The famous Comstock lode is here. 
The "Gould and Curry," "Ophir," "Savage," 
" Mexican," " ChoUar," and other celebrated mines, 
here have their existence. Virginia City alone has 
a population of some twelve thousand, and Gold 
Hill, two miles further on, three or four thousand 
more. Land is sold by the foot, apples by the 
pound, whiskey by the gallon, water by the spoon- 
ful, and dice, cards, tenpins, and billiard tables, are 
spread out by the acre. Something immense is 
Washoe. Exactly what is it ? A great deal of 
prospecting has been done on the surrounding hills, 
many wildcat lodes located, but to this day " pay" 
ore has been taken only from one single lode. 
This extends for some three miles along the side of 
the mountain, and singly and alone comprises the 
entire mineral resources of a world-renowned region. 
The vein is very wide, averaging seventy-five feet. 



THE COMSTOCK LODE. 79 

The vein, mind you, is quartz, not necessarily all 
containing mineral ; which, to the sad experience of 
many, it does not. The ore is found here and there 
in small places, but the whole mass has to be exca- 
vated and assorted outside. The expense is enor- 
mous. One claim has had good success for a time, 
while others, located each side, have found nothing. 
The case above cited (I omit the name) is a literal 
fact, and is the history of most of the enterprises 
that have been started. At a depth of five hundred 
feet I am led to suppose the entire ledge has run 
barren, and all the companies in operation have 
been prospecting at lower depths for a long while — 
near or about two years — evincing great courage, 
and mineralogists say, with undoubted chances of 
success, as no silver lode has ever yet been known 
to give entirely out. But I do not believe any rule 
exists as to mines, except the rule of uncertainty. 
No two have ever yet proved alike. The dip of the 
lode was at first toward the hill. It changed at 
an equal incline the other way — at some four hun- 
dred feet down — involving the necessity of new 
shafts, buildings, etc., and great expense. The tun- 
nels, shafts, etc., are immense. I entered one tun- 
nel twenty-five hundred feet — near half a mile. It 
required two years to dig it, and is not yet taking 
out ore. All the ore which is being reduced from 
these mines at present is that which had been left 
on the side drifts while sinking the main shafts. 



80 FBOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

The mills are not as large as I had supposed — 
one running eighty, a second seventy-two, a third 
sixty stamps, and all others from forty-four to forty- 
five stamps. They are located from one to eighteen 
miles from the mines, wherever they can obtain a 
little rill of water. The ore has to be hauled this 
distance in wagons. The Gould and Curry mill is 
located three miles from their mine. The quantity 
of water which these mills manage to get along 
with is surprisingly small. All the water of any 
mill here might be passed through a quart measure, 
while many of them, both here and at Austin, have 
not enough to fill the mouth of a jug. The loss 
of quicksilver for eight months by one of the mills 
has been exactly three thousand eight hundred and 
fifty pounds, and this the most perfect mill in the 
country. Gentlemen who have been talking about 
the over-supply of quicksilver may put their minds 
at ease on this point. Gulch-mining consumes 
over five times as much in proportion. Every cour- 
tesy and facility was afforded me by some of these 
companies for examining their mines, mills, and 
books, for which they again have my thanks. 

Yirginia City has many large brick buildings, is 
lighted by gas, and presents a busy appearance. 
Real estate is low and population declining. Two 
theatres, a concert saloon, one circus, scores of 
bowling alleys and gambling places, mostly repre- 
sented by astounding bands of music, marked the 



VIRGINIA CITY. 81 

attractions of the place on a Sunday evening. The 
chmate is dry, cool, windy, and extremely dusty. 
From Austin here is thirty-six hours — the moun- 
tains increasing in breadth, the valleys remaining 
the same as all the way back to Salt Lake. No 
grass, trees, or vegetation of any kind are to be seen. 
All is sandy desert, or rocky, bleak, bald, and deso- 
late mountain. 

The thawed mountain snows that sometimes 
make streams running into the valleys are soon 
drank up by the thirsty sands, and neither man nor 
animal can ever here find the natural means of sus- 
tenance. Hay, feed, flour, meats, fruits, and vege- 
tables have to be drawn from California. Wood 
averages eighteen dollars per cord at Virginia. To 
have admitted Nevada as a State, with an equal 
voice in the Senate of the United States with 'New 
York's four milHon people and diversified interests, 
was an unmitigated swindle never to be forgotten 
and always to be execrated. 

DRIVING SIX HORSES. 

The driver had occasion to stop at a wayside 
place, formerly a station, and I took the lines. The 
horses were fiery, lively fellows, the leaders real 
live mustangs. Presently they took it into their 
heads that it was time to go, and on they started. 
Before I could gather the reins, they were in a 

6 



82 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

keen run down the hill ; I pulling, yelhng, and 
bobbing about on the high stage box hke a rush in 
a wind storm. The harness of the wheel-horses 
had no breeching, and I did not think to place my 
foot on the brake, which is the only way to hold 
back in this country. So down they went, pell- 
mell, until I threw the leaders, and the other four 
horses, entangled in the harness, were all piled to- 
gether, and the stage over them. I had succeeded 
in breaking the pole, harness, and almost every- 
thing breakable, and furthermore in convincing 
myself and fellow-passengers that driving six wild 
horses down a mountain side was not exactly in 
my Mne. The driver came up and swore lustily. I 
claimed I did pretty well in keeping the snorting 
Mazeppean steeds in the road, and not sending 
the entire load headlong down the fearful mountain 
gorge. 

The probabilities are that some of my letters 
Between Denver and Salt Lake have not reached 
you. The accounts of Indian barbarities back of 
me are frightful. No stage has followed ours since 
we came through the Rocky Mountains. 

The delay in receiving news, either by letter or 
telegraph, is very perplexing to a person as anxious 
to hear from home as is the subscriber. 



ARRIVAL. 83 



XL 

Good Staging — Thermal Springs— Green Fields— Big 
Trees — Tall Mountains— Snow Banks — Men Buried 
IN Snow Seventy Feet Deep — Donner Lake — Sacra- 
mento — California. • 

San Francisco, July 25, 1865. 

Here at last 1 The Pacific fogs just a little to the 
west ; the hills, sage-brush deserts, and Indians be- 
hind me to the east. If ever there was a happy 
man at seeing a yellow car awaiting him by the 
hill-side, that m*an was the subscriber when he 
alighted from the stage-coach, where the Pacific 
road connects, about thirty miles beyond Sacra- 
mento. The dust in California is a thick, dark red ; 
and with no rains from March to November, its 
density under a July sun is something almost intol- 
erable. We left Yirginia City at 5 p. m. ; nine pas- 
sengers in the stage, four outside, all drawn by six 
fine horses. I must say this is the first real staging 
I have experienced. The roads, ascending and 
descending, cut into the mountain sides like an 
immense W, are smooth, hard, and so easily graded 
as to ascend without difficulty, and to go down, 
under full run, quite exciting to all, and decidedly 



84 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

under protest from the nervous spinster on the 
back seat. About twelve miles out we struck the 
Truckey Meadows and little water run of the same 
name. I think I am safe in saying this is the first 
patch of natural agricultural land we had seen 
since leaving Kansas. The sight of growing grass 
and harvested fields, under the antecedent circum- 
stances, was most refreshing and cheerful. This 
river, like all others in this section, soon disappears 
in the ground. We are now in California. A 
little to the left we pass the Steamboat Springs. 
About two acres of ground are covered with jetting 
smoke arising from scores of different kinds of min- 
eral springs. As we approach the valley from the 
hill above, it seems that here is prepared one of the 
caldrons in which the devil is to try his first exper- 
iments in human cookery. The puffing, gurgling 
noise is quite distinct, and the vapor forms a dense 
rising cloud. Were it not for the more famous 
G-eysers in the northern part of the State, these 
springs would be considered curiosities of very 
decided wonder and interest. 

The scene has changed. We are ascending the 
Sierra Kevadas, with forests upon their sides, pop- 
ulation in their valleys, and eternal snows upon 
their summits. These, too, may be called the first 
trees approaching the dignity of forests we have 
seen anywhere in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Ne- 
braska, Kansas, Missouri, or Illinois, east to Indi- 



THE SIERRA NEVADAS. 85 

ana. As we get further on, and for the distance of 
say fifty miles, the trees assume a size, altitude, and 
straight, majestic appearance, unequalled anywhere, 
I believe, upon the surface of the earth. Their 
great, straight, towering, motionless trunks inspire 
awe and veneration, such as would be natural if 
viewing the ancient cedars of Lebanon, made sacred 
by the history of our Saviour and the footprints of 
the Apostles. 

It was night, but the evening was pleasant, and 
an almost full moon was shining, giving shadow to 
the trees, distinctness to the scenery, and perspec- 
tive to the landscape. These were mountains, 
actual Alps, piled one upon the other, with grad- 
ual, though sudden leaps — up, up, until the mind 
becomes dizzy contemplating their giddy heights. 
Almost upon the topmost level lays ensconced Con- 
ner Lake, cool and tempting, reflecting the rays of 
the moon in silver sheen. By its side are summer 
resorts, and on its placid bosom, as upon our own 
beautiful Mahopac, glides the gondola and yacht, 
eight thousand feet above the city of San Francisco ! 
Trout in abundance tempt the angler's skill. This 
is on what is called the Northern or Dutch Plains 
route. Lake Tahopic, or Bigler, is on the south- 
ern pass, a few miles distant. Of course I did not 
see it. In these wild mountain passes there is 
something truly terrific. Giant trees are lodged — 
head first, top downward, and threaten momenta- 



86 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

rily to take another start ; water does not ripple, 
but plunges, bound after bound, down the precipi- 
tous and rocky canons, while immense rocks them- 
selves have been displaced by the pressure above, 
and lay piled in dangerous shape and frowning 
ugliness. Our road, of course, seeks the lowest 
passes, leaving these immense peaks towering over 
our heads. 

Snow, twelve feet deep, now impeded our prog- 
ress. Think of it, ye sweltering Saratogians ! — 
remember this is the 17th of July. Our overcoats 
were extremely comfortable. But for some hearts 
what a history these snow banks have, for it was 
exactly here that, on the 14th day of January, two 
men, endeavoring to open the roads during a vio- 
lent storm, encountered a snow avalanche from the 
peak above, and thus lost their lives. Their ab- 
sence and object were known at the station near 
by. All the population for fifty miles spent days, 
weeks, and nearly months searching for their bodies. 
The snow was seventy feet deep. A tunnel had 
been cut, running within two feet of them. The 
wife of poor Reynolds went almost wild. Under 
the advice of friends she left her buried treasure, 
and sailed for New York by the steamer of May 1st. 
On the 14th the snow had so far disappeared, that 
both bodies were found standing upright close 
together, their arms outstretched, as if toward the 
advancing avalanche. Oh! excruciating moment! 



SNOW BANKS. 87 

Oh! torturing death ! What must have been their 
reflections while thus imprisoned and before death 
reheved them ? Reynolds' body was encased in a 
metallic coffin and immediately followed his wife. 
The other body was buried by his friends here. 

Soon we were threading the Western descent of 
our road, here and there bordered by irrigating 
canals and httle mining towns. The heavy pines of 
the hills decrease as we make a lower level, and are 
gradually supplanted by the spreading live oak. 
The valleys are little more than narrow canons, the 
soil extremely sandy, and the agricultural products 
meagre. From the irregular course of the fencing 
we observe that land is here considered of little 
value, and is only reclaimed where irrigation is pos- 
sible. Rain does not fall between March and ^o- 
vember. The earth becomes a powder, ready to float 
in the air by the least disturbance, and passengers in 
the stage coaches are well calculated to define what 
dust is. Indeed, our coats, hats, dresses, hair, and 
skins were all one color, and the effect most dis- 
agreeable. We had reached the plains — only a few 
hundred feet above the ocean level. The thermom- 
eter stood at about ninet}^ degrees. The dust has a 
dark-red appearance, adding to the otherwise un- 
pleasant effect. I had never experienced anything 
like it, disagreeable as was the desert dust for the 
past fifteen hundred miles. But it was a foretaste 
of what all California is made of. 



88 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

" Susannah, don't you cry for me ; 
I am going to Sacramento, with my wash-pan on my knee !" 

rang in my ear as the whistle blew, and I was 
informed " This is Sacramento !" From the stage 
to this point we had made about thirty miles on 
the Pacific Railroad — passing through a level, dry, 
parched, almost desert country, with here and there 
a live oak, but nothing like settlements, except 
little decaying stations where the railroad had pre- 
viously temporarily terminated while in process of 
construction. I think I am now capable of saying 
that the Diamond Mountains in Nevada and the 
Sierra ISFevadas in California are the only consider- 
able obstacles to be met with in connecting St. 
Louis and San Francisco by an unbroken rail. This 
end is being pushed vigorously ; five thousand la- 
borers are now at work this side of the mountains, 
and it is generally accepted in San Francisco that 
they will reach Salt Lake City in three or four 
years, unless it may be a short gap on top of the 
Sierra Kevadas. 

We approach the city of Sacramento through 
groves of peach, apple, nectarine, and figs, with 
numerous windmills raising water for irrigating 
purposes. Situated at the head of steamboat navi- 
gation, it has been a place of immense business, 
but the railroad has moved the frontier farther 
inland, and, like Albany, it must wait its day of 
regeneration. The streets are regularly laid out. 



SACRAMENTO. 89 

well built, and evince evidences of enterprise and 
accumulated capital. The terrible freshet of 1862 
has led to some extended dikes, which, until again 
tested, serves to keep property down and enter- 
prise out. Providence, R. I., people have been 
here, for I dined at the " What Cheer" hotel, and 
the meal was just as miserable as you would get in 
Providence itself. I subsequently learned I had not 
stopped at the right place. 

And now we were sailing down the Sacramento, 
in a first-class boat. I endeavored to be roman- 
tic, but I could not. Here, as elsewhere in this 
wonderful El Dorado, I was doomed to disappoint- 
ment. Both banks are principally low and covered 
with a high species of rush, called tulles. Here and 
there a farm approaches the river, in which case 
the crops look only ordinarily fair, excepting fruit, 
which appears to thrive in unusual abundance. It 
is only five to eight miles back to the hills, which 
are wholly treeless and barren. I have since 
visited the valleys of the Petaluma, Russian River, 
Napa, Knights, San Jose (pronounced '' San Ozay") 
etc. They are among the richest of the State, and 
fully represent the whole State in climate, produc- 
tions, etc. They differ only in degree, not in char- 
acter, from the Sacramento. Most valleys are nar- 
row, from one to six miles. They are rich and 
productive when they can be watered. They are 
not divided by hills, but real mountains. These 



90 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

mountains, if not barren and verdureless, are mostly 
covered with stunted oaks, chaparral, chimisells or 
wild oats, and can only be cultivated where irriga- 
tion is practicable. The intelligent reader will thus 
easily observe that settlements must be confined to 
small strips of land, affording few inducements for 
the spread of social refinement and educational 
advantages. 

This is ha^'vest season. N'o green thing but 
trees meets the eye. All appear to be .dead and 
cheerless. But the winter rains will again impart 
new life where any existed before, and I am well 
satisfied both the landscape and climate must be 
beautiful. 



SAN FRANCISCO. 91 



XII. 

San Francisco — Fogs— Dolores Mission — Chinese — 
Chinese Theatre — Seals — Fine Hotels — Salmon — 
Alcatros — Schools. 

San Francisco, Aug. 1, 1865. 

This is, of course, the New York of the Pacific 
States. If New York glories in its Broadway, 
Central Park, Fifth avenue, and beautiful bay, so 
does San Francisco in its Montgomery street, un- 
rivalled hotels, miserable fogs, cold ungracious 
winds, fine salmon, big seals, and luscious fruits. 
In all of these she is unequalled. It certainly is a 
marvellous place. Only seventeen years old, with 
a population of about one hundred thousand, and 
all the commercial and social evidences of accumu- 
lated wealth and refinement. It is very unfortu- 
nately located for ease, beauty, or comfort. It 
already extends over four immense hills, the soil is 
very sandy, the wind blows incessantly from about 
one p. M. until sundown, filling the air with clouds 
of dust. In those sections where the streets are 
not paved it is terrible to encounter. I have seen 
fences ^yq feet high inundated by drifted sand 
like a northern snow-bank. For this reason, 



92 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

there is no white paint in San Francisco — not a 
square yard. Clothes cannot be dried in the open 
air in the after part of the day. The sand finds 
its way into houses, upon carpets and furniture, 
involving the temper of the housewife and the 
softness of your hair. Grardens have to be made 
artificially, and almost every evening, all night, 
and mornings until the sun gets well up, a dense 
fog drifts in, excluding objects from view, making 
walks and clothing damp — too cold to sit with- 
out fires, and hardly cold enough for them. This 
kind of weather extends to the rainy season, 
which is our winter. It is not then materially 
colder than in summer, and the rain principally 
falling at night leaves the days very pleasant. 
Roses, geraniums, oleanders, feuchias, arbutilans, 
cactus, etc., grow to immense size, and when water- 
ed are in full bloom twelve months in the year. A 
few miles north or south and fifteen miles inland 
up the bay, this wind, fog, and low temperature 
entirely disappear. To me it seems a great wonder 
that some other position was not selected for the 
site of the maritime city of the Pacific States. 
True, for some distance inland the hills dip im- 
mediately into the water, but making this distance, 
beautiful sites could have been obtained, and the 
most important consideration of all seemed — that 
of throwing the city on the inland side of the bay. 
As it now is she has access to but one small neck 



MISSION DOLORES. 93 

of land lying between the ocean and parallel bay 
of San Jose, extending southward fifty miles, ex- 
cept by water. 

The remnants of the Old Spanish Mission in the 
shape of long one-story adobe houses, with walls 
four feet thick, projecting piazzas, tile roofs, barred 
windows, etc., still exist in one of the back suburbs 
of the city. The church and all its surroundings 
are strongly characteristic of the day and habits of 
the promulgators of the ancient Catholic faith. It 
is an immensely long, narrow structure, without 
steeples, a crucifix upon top, heavy prison-like 
doors, three niches under the roof in the front 
gable end, in which are suspended one large and 
two smaller sized bells. The bells are hung, rafters 
held in place, doors swung, and all other mechanical 
support made by the use of pieces of raw hides. 
The paintings and chancel paraphernalia are gaudy. 
The statuary has been principally removed, and 
much that marks the historic renown of Mission 
Dolores is passing away forever. 

Scattered throughout this Western coast are 
many Chinese, who find their homes, rendezvous, 
amusements, and base of supplies in San Francisco. 
Observed in the streets or in houses of Americans, 
they are always clean, respectful, and energetic. 
They have entirely appropriated one section of the 
city to themselves, and in the small houses, crowded 
alleys, and incommodious apartments, where the 



94 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

majority of them reside, you see evidences of great 
privation, hardship, and little elevation of character. 
They are, however, a progressive race, and make 
their presence felt. Many of their merchants are 
among the wealthiest and most respectable in the 
country. The women of all ages now here are 
generally openly depraved ; yet in the lowest 
places, personal neatness and presentable attire 
are always seen. The Chinese men say they do not 
bring their wives with them. In all instances their 
religious custom compels them to ship the bodies 
of dead Chinamen to their native land for interment. 
Servants can only be secured from among them by 
an obligation to this effect on the part of the em- 
ployer. Their theatre is a wonder, and character- 
istic in its way. Rough in its interior construction, 
it has ordinary seats raised circus fashion for about 
three hundred persons. They dispense with mov- 
able scenery, but a stationary scene crosses a raised 
stage at about twenty feet from its front, with two 
wide doors near the right and left-hand sides, 
covered by falling drapery, and between which and 
back of the actors is located the orchestra. The 
entire walls of the stage are decorated with Chinese 
hieroglyphics, between which and the label of a tea 
chest, my inexperienced eye could detect but little 
difference. The acting consisted of sundry indi- 
viduals coming upon the stage through one door, 
and reciting some kind of an independent and most 



CHINESE. 95 

generally disconnected piece, some in irony, some 
comical, some serious, and then retiring by the 
opposite door. Meanwhile the orchestra, consisting 
of one string instrument, played with the fingers, 
and three kettle drums, kept up a most furious 
accompaniment, as little approaching music as 
anything could be and yet have any connection 
with the pantomimic representation before them. 
We first entered at nine o'clock, remained half an 
hour, then went out searching the town for wonders, 
and returned again after eleven ; remainecj another 
half hour, saw a continuation of the same play, and 
the same audience, pleased, attentive, and listening, 
who, we were informed, would stay until one 
o'clock in the morning ; and the piece, running 
through several centuries, is sometimes extended 
for days. 

I can bear testimony to the Chinese being the 
best washers and ironers in the world. A lady 
with whom I dined, giving her orders to "Whang" 
excited some curiosity in my mind, which in all 
respects, when gratified, was entirely creditable to 
the Chinese race as neat, genteel, orderly, and 
willing servants. They wear clothes always ironed 
with seams in, and look as if they were just out of 
a bandbox themselves. 

The next thing in order in San Francisco is to 
visit Seal Rock, and breakfast at the Cliff House. 
Eight miles back of the city, on the ocean, reached 



96 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

by a good road made over barren, sandy hills, is 
the promontory looking out upon the broad Pacific, 
here known as Cliff Rock, and a little further around 
to the North making the southern boundary of 
the Golden Grate. According to arrangements, my 
friend's carriage was at my hotel at seven o'clock, 
and with overcoats and wolf-skin robes, this July 
morning, amid a heavy fog, we made the Cliff 
House, chill and damp, at eight. Our breakfast in 
fish, meats, eggs, wines, vegetables, and fruits, was 
perfect and well relished. Meanwhile, ye youth- 
ful wonder-hunters and museum explorers, what a 
sight was here to have gratified your curiosity and 
excited your wonder ! 

At our feet dashed the angry breakers of waters 
wafted, perhaps, from the very shores of Asia ; 
while a few rods out in the ocean rose several large 
island rocks, as large, say, as the house in which 
you live ; an immense number of big birds, gulls, 
pelicans, ducks, boobys, etc., hovering over them 
and resting upon the ledges ; while fighting for 
their places, climbing up the irregular sides, sleep- 
ing in piles, singly and in pairs, quarrelling, biting, 
rolling off, and swinging about, were infinite 
quantities of real live seals, or sea lions. They are 
of all sizes, from the little one, such as you see at 
Barnum's, to the immense fellows as large as a 
horse, and weighing over two thousand pounds. 
They show very ugly teeth and bark like dogs. 



HOTELS — FBUITS. 97 

The noise is incessant ; the din uproarious. Cer- 
tainly they are a great curiosity and very inter- 
esting. 

No place in the States, New York not excepted, 
has four as large and well-kept hotels as San 
Francisco. Unlike the cramped lounging rooms 
in the Fifth avenue or St. Nicholas, we have plenty 
of room in every variety and style. As to tables 
they could not be better, and are waited upon by 
orderly servants of uniform size and orderly train- 
ing. And then such salmon, cantelopes, and 
grapes ! They are enough to make one's mouth 
water for months. Strawberries commence here 
in February, and do not disappear until November. 
Excepting peaches, the flavor of which is very 
negative, all fruits are equal to our own, while 
nectarines, plums, and melons are superior. Figs 
are rich and abundant. The prevailing grape at 
this early season is the white sweetwater, which 
in flavor is not far inferior to the Black Hamburg of 
our glasshouse culture. The purple grapes are 
not as good as our Isabellas. 

A description of a visit to the wine-cellars would 
be without interest to my readers. They are on a 
large scale, and the demand is such for the wines, 
that nothing older than the vintages of 1864 is to 
be had in the city. 

San Francisco has a method of numbering her 
streets which ought to be adopted by all large 

7 



98 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

cities without delay. Commencing at No. 1, the 
odd numbers on one side and the even upon the 
other ; they follow this rotation only through one 
block. The next block commencing at 100, the 
third at 200, and so on. If a person wishes to 
find, sa}^ 840, he knows it is but eight blocks from 
the commencement of the street ; or if, then, at 
500, but three blocks from his present position. 
Then again, in case of filling in numbers or dividing 
lots, it avoids half numbers or changing the num- 
bers of the entire street. 'Now, Mr. Mayor, let us 
have your recommendation upon this point in our 
terribly mixed up city. 

The beauties of our overtaxed community are 
also observed here in the shape of a State license 
tax for doing business, a separate stamp tax of two 
dollars per thousand on drafts and bills of exchange, 
a wharf tax of twenty-five cents per carriage when 
leaving a boat, etc. What a debt of gratitude the 
dear people owe patriotic politicians throughout the 
country ! But the honor of a dime stolen from the 
public is so much greater than the dollar earned by 
honest industry, and the people themselves take 
such a placid satisfaction in wearing rings in their 
noses, that I mistrust it will be a long time before 
this will change. What do you expect would be 
the effect of elevating a man just once to executive 
office, too independent to owe supposed obligations 
to political parasites — too sensible to be cajoled. 



FORT ALCATROS. 9& 

and too rich to be corrupted? Wouldn't the dis- 
appointed soreheads make Rome howl? How I 
should hate to be that man's wife ! Certainly she 
would not know her husband through the thick 
clouds of calumny if he ever came up for re- 
election ! 

Alcatros is a high, round, barren, rocky island, 
containing three to five acres, surmounted by a 
strong fortification commanding in all directions, 
and is the Fort Lafayette of the harbor. Viewed 
from a steamer crossing the bay, and looking up 
against the dark chaparral sides of Mount Tamul- 
pais, rising two thousand six hundred feet above 
the sea just across the Golden Gate — it makes one 
of the finest pictures in the world. If Staten Island 
was a Vesuvius how it would finish the landscape 
of our beautiful New York. 

San Francisco, hke the Roman Senators, does not 
forget her youth. She is justly celebrated for the 
number and variety of her schools for both sexes. 
The character of the public school-houses, in neat- 
ness of surroundings and architectural beauty and 
comfort, is superior to those of New York. 

From Salt Lake, greenback currency is not seen, 
and gradually you again become accustomed to the 
jingle of real gold and silver. Nothing circulates 
less than a dime, and small items appear high, but 
in the matter of large purchases they are much less 
than I had supposed. First-class hotel board $3 
per day, etc. 



100 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACEFIC. 



XIII. 

California — Tillable Land — Wood Lands — Climate — 
Petaluma — Santa Kosa — Healdsburg — Sonoma Quick- 
silver Mine — The Geysers — A Hard Ride. 

San Francisco, Aug. 12, 1865. 

California contains one hundred and fifty-five 
thousand square miles, embracing thirty-three 
times the area of the State of Connecticut. I have 
seen its hills, valleys, v^oodlands, deserts, mineral 
regions, and its farming lands ; have observed the 
character of its soil, the peculiarities of its temper- 
ature, and its various utile characteristics. As a 
whole, general sterility meets the eye, and the 
practical mind readily observes that its population 
cannot become dense. Involuntarily the question 
is asked, where and how do the immense herds of 
stock find pasturage and the means of subsistence ? 
The inquiry was well answered last year, when it 
being unusally dry many thousand head of cattle 
and horses starved to death. The soil best adapted 
to agriculture does not produce better than in the 
Eastern States, while the insufficiency of title to 
land of any value, has much retarded development. 
The long intermission of rains makes crops very 



TILLABLE LAND. 101 

uncertain — sometimes plenty, at other times noth- 
ing — while the bleak, parched barren mountains 
lose their remnant of verdure during the hot sea- 
son, until it really seems that cattle have nothing 
to feed upon but the decomposed earth. If I re- 
member correctly, Mr. Grreeley estimated one-third 
of the surface of the State to be tillable land. My 
impressions are that hardly one-twentieth will ever 
return the seed put on the ground. It is mountain 
almost everywhere ; not mere ranges, like those 
of Nevada, but irregular piles, lessening here, in- 
creasing there, assuming all manner of uninviting 
shapes, and only interspersed in the main by narrow 
canons or small valleys. The Sierra Nevadas, in 
the Eastern part of the State, from one base to the 
other by a direct line, I estimate at some forty 
miles. Commencing near the top and sloping each 
way, disappearing by the time the bottoms are 
reached, is good wood, regular Eastern forests, and 
these are nearly all that constitutes the wood land 
of Cahfornia. In the north-eastern section of So- 
noma county, bordering the coast, are what are 
known as the red wood (manzaneta) forests, and a 
few small patches exist elsewhere. It is hard for 
the Eastern traveller to conceive a new country 
without making it either heavy timbered or level 
prairie. Treeless, verdureless, barren sand moun- 
tains are hitherto unknown to him. This, then, is 
what makes the distinct difference in the landscape. 



102 FBOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

gives the very diversified temperature, drinks up 
even the night dews, prevents summer rains, and 
must affect the results of financial investments. 
Some mountains are covered with thick chaparral, 
others with scattered scrub oaks, or cedars ; others 
with patches of wild oats, while the majority are 
wholly barren and lifeless. As to climate — how 
singular that we never, or so seldom, hear anything 
correctly stated ! Either the romantic license of the 
professional tourist, or the narrow prejudices of in- 
terested, inexperienced minds, color, shade, and 
over or under state effects, causes, and peculiarities, 
until it is hardly safe to venture an opinion upon 
hearsay. For one, I had supposed the general 
temperature of California was equable, mild, cool, 
and delightful. I left San Francisco at nine o'clock 
in the morning with an overcoat and decidedly cool. 
We travelled three hours by boat and dined at 
Petaluma with the thermometer one hundred and 
two degrees in the shade. Of all hot places on the 
surface of the earth, you can find the hottest here 
fifteen miles from the ocean. Although dated at 
San Francisco, I am writing this on the Mexican 
coast, immediately under an equatorial sun, and 
our thermometer, assisted by the refraction of the 
sunlight on the water, has not been so high by 
several degrees as we found it on the Russian river 
and the Geyser Mountain, one hundred to one hundred 
and five degrees in the shade during the long sum- 



TEMPEKATUBE. 



103 



mer, and not even an evening dew, much less a tem- 
pering rain. I had several days of this kind of 
experience, and many degrees added by being ex- 
posed in or on a stage coach, or on horseback, over 
dry ridges, etc. 

My health has hardly been sufficient for the task, 
and the great fatigue incident to my hurried trip 
has detracted much from my enthusiasm and enjoy- 
ment. But I hardly think my readers will allow 
their sympathies for this reason to stand as suffi- 
cient excuse for the lack of interest thrown into my 
letters. Be pleased to remember, dear friends, that 
I came unheralded ; that my tour has been for 
business, not pleasure ; that I promised you noth- 
ing to start with, and if you are disappointed as you 
follow me along, it will add to my regrets, but 
cannot create a consciousness that I have not faith- 
fully recorded facts as I have found them. 

Allow me just here to add what all my personal 
friends previously knew, that I have not the vanity 
to put myself before the public as a letter writer, 
in competition with those whose lives have been 
spent in acquiring the sleight of hand, as well as 
the information necessary to make their literary 
efforts either interesting to the public or creditable 
to themselves. Labor for myself, not writing for 
others, is my calling. If, in acquiring a little outside 
information for myself through this section of the 
world, where the financial current is now setting so 



104 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

stroDg, I have transmitted the least mterest or 
pleasure to others, I am certainly recompensed for 
the extra labor which indicting these desultory 
letters has imposed upon me. Excuse so much 
that is personal, and now accompany me on 

A TRIP TO THE GEYSERS. 

The crab-like shape of the waters comprising the 
bay of San Francisco, form quite a little sea of 
themselves. First comes Goat's Island, Alcostra 
fortification, Pelican Island, covered with immense 
birds, many pleasant promontories and rolling sand- 
hills, and then we wind into the Petaluma river, 
about the size of the Raritan up to New Bruns- 
wick, and debark forty miles from the city, in the 
village of Petaluma, a place of two thousand inhab- 
itants, and of great activity and business. We 
then stage for thirty odd miles, and both by boat 
and stage have been surrounded by a fine valley 
landscape of irrigated farms, wild pasture lands, 
and live oak openings. For miles together, these 
scattered branching oaks convey the impression of 
an old orchard of immense proportions. The crops 
are here considered good — wheat, I think, thirty 
bushels to the acre. 

We have passed Santa Rosa, another beautiful 
town, laid out on the Mexican plan of a plaza or 
park in the centre ; and Healdsburg, further up on 



VILLAGES. 105 

the bend of the Russian river, and just before it 
turns westward to break the hills and find the 
ocean. I cannot repress surprise at the size, thrift, 
and apparent age of these valley villages. Our 
villages East occur at a distance of from five to ten 
miles from each other ; here they are twenty to 
forty miles apart, and of course are centres for a 
larger section of country. Hence the difference. 
The Russian is a large, turbulent stream in winter, 
but in summer its running water is inconsiderable, 
and this frequently disappears, and after coursing 
its subterraneous passage for a mile or so, reap- 
pears clear and cool, and ripples onward in appar- 
ent delight. We first crossed its bed on dry stones, 
and then again two miles further up, in water a 
foot or two deep. 

Leaving the Geyser road at Foss', formerly 
Ray's Station, we take saddle horses, and over hills 
of wild oats, scattered pines, and patches of chime- 
selle and chaparral, with St. Helena peak on our 
right and G-eyser peak on the left, presenting a 
picturesque route, up, down, between, and again 
up hills until just on top of the last summit, and 
looking over into the valley of the Big Sulphur 
creek, we were started from our quiet by an explo- 
sion under our feet, and then realized we were at 
the Quicksilver Mines of Sonoma. Soon we were 
treading our way through the tunnels, down the 
shafts, and among the chambers of the only free 



106 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

native quicksilver mine in the world. In all other 
mines quicksilver is only found in streaks of cinna- 
bar, sulphur ets of mercury. Here it is equally 
interspersed with cinnabar and free metal, filling 
the cavities in the rocks. Opening a mine and get- 
ting lodes defined, roads built, buildings erected, 
and everything in successful operation, is not the 
work of a few weeks, but much longer than the 
uninitiated suppose. But about three men can 
work in one shaft at a time. At the foot of the 
hill at this place, down just eleven hundred feet, is 
the Big Sulphur creek, capable of furnishing all 
necessary power for mills, reduction works, etc. 

In the valley, and contiguous to the mines, are 
six hundred and forty acres of the finest woodland 
I have ever seen, belonging to the company, con- 
sisting of immense pine, live oak, the beautiful yel- 
low madroon, and the red manzaneta. Nowhere 
in California have I seen so much of utility and 
beauty combined. Venison and beef were swung 
in the trees — a universal market stall seen in this 
country only — where, singularly enough, flies are 
unknown and the climate does not taint. Our 
friend Scovill also breakfasted us on trout taken 
from the stream. The operations of this company 
have but recently commenced, and, compared with 
the ''Almaden," which I afterward visited, the 
results of the enterprise must soon tell upon the 
commerce of the world. When we realize that 



SONOMA QUICKSILVER MINES. 107 

ninety-five per cent, of all the quicksilver any- 
where produced, comes from three sources — the 
Old Almaden in Spain, the Idrea in Austria, and 
the New Almaden of California — and that gold and 
silver cannot be amalgamated without its free use, 
as well as the many other indispensable purposes 
of science, medicine, and the arts, for which it is 
necessary, and the dignity and national importance 
of a new mine of this inviting character may be 
appreciated. 

It is located but about six miles from the Grey- 
sers. I was compelled to spend several days in 
the vicinity, in the mean time following the top of 
the hill — a road through the canon not having yet 
been cut — we proceed by a rough trail, on horse- 
back, and intersect the road we had left at Foss', 
at the Hog^s Back, a place long since recognized 
by tourists as one of the grandest in this wonder- 
ful country. A high elevation has been made, and 
immediately on the apex of a sharp hill — extensive 
valleys on either side — for four miles the road fol- 
lows the serpentine, wild, and grandly picturesque 
summit. It is a ride long to be remembered. But 
now we again look over into the depths of the 
canon beyond, thinking we could throw a stone 
into the creek, and wonder how a wagon is ever to 
reach the bottom. If you are on horseback you 
will wish yourself in a wagon ; if in a wagon, you 
will wish yourself afoot ; for you have yet exactly 



108 FKOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

two miles to make, oi:e thousand six hundred feet 
of descent to overcome, and thirty-five abrupt turns 
on the mountain side to prepare for. Foss drives 
four horses, with a stage-load of passengers, down 
in twelve minutes — has done it in ten ; but we were 
near an hour doing it on horseback, half the time 
on our horses' necks at that. It is the most of a 
hill road I had seen this side of the White Moun- 
tains, and the first time I had fully realized just 
how high one thousand six hundred feet really was. 
But wasn't it hot ! The sun scalding, the hot 
springs puffing and blowing, and not a whiff of air 
in circulation — and no iced lemonade or claret 
punch. I think, however, this is but the expe- 
rience of pleasure- seekers the world over. I have 
understood Mrs. Nicodemus to say even Saratoga 
lacked some of the comforts of her own suburban 
home ! 

You have seen the wonderful Greysers described 
many times. Lieutenant Davidson did it officially, 
while Bayard Taylor, with his accumulated powder 
of comparison, has correctly delineated them, and 
all persons of travel set them down among the 
"big things" of the whole world. Their utility is 
a little obscure ; but I am inclined to think that, 
without a breathing hole somewhere for the inte- 
rior heat, which, we are told, seethes and burns 
and makes iron, rocks, and all things molten lava 
at some forty miles depth, we should have more 



THE GEYSERS. 109 

volcanoes than we have, and what place would come 
m for the first lava bath it would be impossible 
to guess. Let any man come here and witness 
bubbling caldrons throwing the masses of water 
two feet high, hot steam disappearing in the clouds, 
sulphurous vapors filling his lungs and nostrils, and 
the ground so hot as to warp the soles off his boots, 
and if he does not begin to have a salutary fear of 
death and the devil, he is different from most per- 
sons. 

Imagine several little Gulches debouching into 
the large caiion within the space of a mile or so, 
and in each a great number and infinite variety of 
mineral springs, exhalations, and gaping seams, 
gurgling, roaring, puffing, oozing, rippling, steam- 
ing, and leaving all manner of incrustations, crys- 
tallizations, and composites ; some of the water 
running as dark as weird witches' ink, others, im- 
mediately at their sides, of entirely different tem- 
perature, mineral character, and shades of color ; 
and the sense of sight alone comprehends the won- 
derful, terrific Greysers. Then come their chemical 
distinctions, mineral characteristics, temperature, 
taste, medical uses, etc. ; iron, sulphur, soda, acidu- 
lated alum, iodine, ammonia, epsom salts, magnesia, 
alkali, nitre, tartaric acid, with many other shades 
and combinations, varying in temperature from sev- 
enty to two hundred degrees, and capable of boil- 
ing an egg or cooking an Indian in less than a 



110 FBOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

minute — all abound. Infallible cures for cutaneous 
diseases, rheumatic complaints, mercurial taints, 
and sore eyes, are abundantly vouched for. Indeed, 
one of my curiosities is a bottle of the famous G^QJ- 
ser Spring eye-water. I do not purpose to do any- 
thing like justice to this place, leave it with reluc- 
tance, and shall always return to it in imagination 
with pleasure. When the Pacific road is finished, 
it wiU be the summer trip for our KTew York 
friends, and second only to Niagara. 



KUSSIAN IlIVER VALLEY. Ill 



XIV. 

EussuN EiVER — Spanish ''Titles— Soda Springs — Caus- 
TOGA Springs — Napa Valley — San Jose Valley — 
Windmills — Almaden Quicksilver Mine. 

San Francisco, Aug. 2, 1865. 

Having procured a guide at the Greysers, we 
breakfasted at five o'clock, and at six v^ere in our 
saddles clambering over the foot-hills, taking ob- 
servations, and following the course of the Big 
Sulphur, or Pluton Creek, as it is more recently 
called, to its confluence with the Russian River. I 
am no mountaineer either by habit or inclination. 
Twice we were compelled to make the extreme 
height of land on one side of the creek ; once on 
the other, with a numerous amount of zigzags, ups 
and downs, crossings, etc. Weary and hungry we 
were happy to rest our horses under a live oak on 
the top of the mountain, as we came in sight of the 
beautiful valley of the Russian river, and there 
drank in a delightful landscape. Nestling upon 
the further valley side lay the pretty Uttle village 
of Cloverdale, shaded by its rich orchards of apple, 
peach, figs, and apricots, while like a silver thread 
rippling in the sunlight here and there the waters 



112 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

of the Russian river crept along in silence. Still 
further westward rose the blue contour of the Red 
Wood Mountains, while up and down the irregu- 
larities of the hills shutting in or enlarging the 
view of the valley, finished a picture of rare beauty. 
We watered our horses at the spring hard by, 
treated ourselves to some claret and limes, and 
descended to a farm house where we secured bread 
for ourselves and oats for our horses. Our host 
belonged to that class of men termed drunkards. 
The farm was conducted by the wife, a vigorous, 
smart, amiable lady, once handsome, and whose 
youthful days had been spent " as merry as a 
marriage bell " near the city of New York. Poor 
woman, how she cried while relating her trials and 
endeavoring to look hopefully into the future which 
overhung the fate of her little family. The farm 
was less than average in quality, poor in buildings 
and improvements, about sixty miles from water 
communication, and yet could be sold for $35 gold 
per acre. She was clinging to it as one of the 
things rum would not be likely to blast. When I 
advised her to sell it and pocket the money, and 
gave as my reasons that ever to be dreaded cloud 
hanging over the head of California pioneers, in 
the shape of an old Spanish land grant, which I 
knew was being silently worked out, and which 
some day might leave her homeless, her grief was 
really heart-rending. I could only point to the 



SPANISH TITLES. 113 

thunderbolt, but could not avert the storm. Men 
will not love their neighbors as they do themselves. 

One false step on the part of the nation has 
carried ruin to many innocent hearts. The treaty 
of Guadalupe Hidalgo, after the close of the Mexi- 
can war, recognized the titles of hereditary claim- 
ants to grants of land made by the Spanish 
authorities, which had never been seen, known, 
occupied, or improved by the grantees. Surveys 
never had been made, boundaries and the quantities 
always uncertain. Subsequent settlements by the 
Americans made whole valleys valuable, when 
these supposed titles were exhumed, courts sub- 
orned, surveys made, and boundaries floated to 
where most valuable and the actual settlers ousted 
of their rights. In the latter respects the character 
of the courts has been changed, and land sup- 
posed to have been obtained for grazing purposes 
on some river bottom, cannot finally be located up 
in the mountains to gobble up some one's rich 
mines. Nevertheless, the evil to agricultural inter- 
terests still exists. Many are the miles of most 
beautiful valley land which is yet nothing but 
public pasture ground, from the inability to secure 
titles sufficient to justify cultivation. Actual im- 
provements only ought to have been recognized by 
our Grovernment. 

Following the river down some twenty odd miles, 
we drank natural soda-water from springs on the 

8 



114 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

bank, refreshed ourselves on peaches, grapes, and 
figs overhanging the gardens, and arrived again 
at Foss' at eight p. m. Fifty miles of horseback 
riding over naked hills, in a terrifically hot sun, is 
not a small task for an uninitiated New Yorker, 
and we ate our supper in weary silence. The next 
morning, at three o'clock, guided by the stars and 
the dim profile of Mount St. Helena, we were in a 
wagon bound across Knight's Valley, and secured 
our breakfast at a neat bandbox of a place known 
as Calistoga Springs. California is full of mineral 
springs and places of natural interest, consequently 
the objects of watering-place sojournment are too 
much divided to give striking preeminence to any. 
Calistoga, however, is quite delightful, and more 
has been done in a public manner to make it at- 
tractive than has yet been accomplished at our 
famous Saratoga. Numerous pretty white uniform 
cottages nestled among flowers, gravel walks, and 
splendid drives surround the principal hotel or 
eating-hall, while jutting quite into the grounds on 
one side is a sharp, pretty hill, surmounted by 
inviting cream saloons, and affording climbing ex- 
ercise and an extensive view. 

We are at the head of Napa Yalley, well culti- 
vated, fertile, and rich. Wheat is the principal 
crop, but grape and fruits form no inconsiderable 
part of the cultivation. The village of Napa, at 
the head of navigation, and celebrated for its natu- 



SAN JOSE VALLEY. Il5 

ral spring of pure soda-water, is a smart, thriving 
place of some two thousand inhabitants. Taking 
the steamboat, we again turn toward San Francis- 
co, some forty miles distant, pass the character- 
istic scenery already described as incident to the 
bay, stop at the Government Navy Yard, at Mares 
Island, and dine in the city at six p. M. 

. The next day we were again in the cars down the 
San Jose Valley at the south. After passing some 
ten miles of most uninteresting sand-hills, we strike 
a warm chmate, beautifully cultivated farms, and 
many of the country-seats of the San Francisco 
population who can afford such a luxury. Hun- 
dreds of wind-mills are always in sight, whose busi- 
ness it is to draw water from numerous wells and 
force it through irrigating troughs to every part of 
the land. This is harnessing the wind to good ac- 
count, and the traveller cannot fail to be interested 
in the sight, as much as the owners are in the 
results. They commence their labors regularly at 
about one p. m., increasing with great rapidity for 
three hours, when at sundown not a zephyr is 
stirring, and their outstretched arms stand power- 
less and still. Here is a fine chance for the Hlinois 
farmers to learn a lesson, which I am surprised 
has not been done long ago. The little towns of 
Redwood, San Mateo, Santa Clare, San Jose, etc., 
are all pretty smart and active, while at the latter 
place we found a hotel equal in all respects to those 



116 FROM TBE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

of our Eastern cities. It is in these small localities 
that California has acquired the reputation of its 
agreeable climate. Here the thermometer does not 
vary over twenty degrees the year round, and with 
its variety of production, and ease of access, may 
well be considered a most delightful place for a 
home. 

Remaining over night, we took a carriage early 
next morning for a visit to the Almaden Quick- 
silver mines — distance tv^elve miles Quicksilver, 
unlike most other minerals, is not found in distinct 
veins, but in pockets or chambers of greater or 
less capacity. The smallest indications, spots of 
cinnabar like a pin-head, or veins no thicker than 
a knife-blade, are followed with great caution, with- 
out regard to inclination or direction, until the 
chamber is struck or the lode found false. Thus 
we found drifting from the main tunnel all kinds 
of lateral drifts — dug ways, deep holes, crab shaped 
chambers, connecting with other drifts, etc. The 
rock dislocated by the blasts is carefully removed 
to the light, broken into small pieces with sledge 
hammers, and everything bearing the faintest indi- 
cation of cinnabar thrown into a pile for removal 
to the furnaces, some three miles distant down the 
hill. The expense of operating quicksilver mines 
is principally in obtaining the ore. The mineral- 
bearing pieces of rock are simply put in a large 
furnace, heat applied, and the vapor condensed by 
coming in contact with water coolers. This pre- 



ALMADEN QUICKSILVER MINES. 117 

cipitates the quicksilver, w^hich runs out into kettles, 
and is put in old-fashioned Spanish iron flasks, con- 
taining seventy-six and a half pounds each, an iron 
screw forming the stopper, and that is all. No 
chemicals, no amalgamators ; simply fire and water. 
A stream of quicksilver running from the furnace 
into the iron receivers, is a pretty siglit. 

These mines were opened in 1848, are worked 
by a joint stock company with a capital of eight 
million dollars — produced about two million dollars 
of returns last year, and are the most productive 
mines in the world. Will some one please inform 
me why this stock is selling at fifty per cent, on its 
par value ? I think I could tell were I disposed to. 
The public know literally nothing about distant 
corporations. As to this mine, over sixty different 
tunnels have been dug into the mountain — only two 
of them are working. It costs as much to dig false 
tunnels as true ones, to excavate barren rock as 
pay rock ; but the outsider is led to suppose that 
the cost of smelting the small pieces of ore which 
are put in the furnaces, is all there is of it. Eighty 
thousand dollars was expended on a single one of 
these tunnels which never produced a cent. Then 
the majority of the rock brought from tunnels which 
do pay is barren, broken to pieces, examined and 
thrown away. Instead of saying, so many flasks 
of quicksilver were produced from fifty tons of 
rock, it ought to include the entire excavation, 
which would be five thousand tons of rock, etc. 



118 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 



XV. 

My Opinion about Mining — Eecapitulation. 

San Francisco, Aug. 2, 1865. 

I LEFT New York June 7, have visited the min- 
eral sections of Colorado, Utah, Egan, Reese river, 
Washoe, and portions of California ; have submitted 
to an involuntary detention of several days by the 
Indians, attended to my private business in differ- 
ent localities, and by clipping a little here and 
there, and turning night into day, shall be able to 
take the steamer to-morrow, August 3, according 
to my original programme. 

And now, to sum up and recapitulate. When I 
was a boy, I shared the youthful delusion that a 
bag of gold always existed away off where the rain- 
bow met the ground. There always exists a con- 
trolling element in the minds of men that fortunes 
are sure, and everything on an immense scale, away 
off somewhere. Furthermore, to really dig gold 
and silver first handed, without the struggles of 
intermediate and second-hand effort, is very attrac- 
tive, and so we of the East have been rushing west- 
ward, allured by the fortunes of a few lucky, ones, 
and the sanguine descriptions of Uncle Jack^s 



MINING. 119 

astounding prospectus, until discrimination is lost 
sight of and common sense appears at a discount. 
That gold, silver, copper, lead, etc., exist through- 
out this western country in fabulous amounts, is 
beyond a question ; and I have but little doubt that 
the entire desolate ranges of mountains, extending 
from British America on the north to Terra del 
Fuego in the south, contain more and richer depos- 
its of precious metals than are to be found else- 
where upon the suface of the earth. 

But my observation has taught me that popula- 
tion — a large crop of men and women, all of whom 
in our civilized country have numerous wants to be 
supplied and whims to be catered to, from a paper 
of pins to a plough or a waterfall — is the true ma- 
terial out of which money is most easily and most 
surely coined. A merchant is not apt to trust his 
business to the most brilliant graduate of a mere 
theoretic commercial college, but relies wholly 
upon the ability obtained by practice. The same 
rule ought and must apply to mining. The best of 
mines will be of indifferent success while in the 
hands of these would-be scientific adepts, but who 
really are in turn humbugs, spendthrifts, egotists, 
and dead weights. Young men must grow into 
these places by degrees, and the person who directs 
a mine should have commenced by handling a pick. 
I believe that is the way our stores are managed ; 
while I am equally certain it is just the way most 



120 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

mining enterprises are not managed. Works should 
be commenced reasonably small, and expand only 
on the basis of success already obtained. The 
country where most mining is carried on is very 
desolate, agricultural productions mere nothing, 
and consequently everything required very ex- 
pensive. Where no productive industries exist, 
and all men turn speculators, morals are soon 
undermined, and few resist the influences or re- 
main capable of telling the truth or of keeping 
a contract. If it costs one hundred dollars to get 
ninety dollars out of a mine, the result is quite as 
disastrous as if the loss was made in selling shoes 
or dry goods. This need not be the case, but that 
it most frequently is, is indisputable — not from 
want of ore, but from bad management and rascal- 
ity. Look at the position of the mining regions. 
From the Missouri river to the Rocky Mountains, 
six hundred miles, is a vast rolling plain so circum- 
stanced as to atmospheric effects, soil, wood, and 
water, that the majority of the last three hundred 
miles cannot ever produce anything to live upon ; 
one hundred and fifty miles through the mountains 
to the ]N"orth Platte, the altitude renders the climate 
inhospitable and the summers too short to ripen 
crops. Thence two hundred and seventy-five miles 
to Bridger is a terrific barren desert. From this 
to Salt Lake, one hundred and eighty miles, is a 
high, broken, irregular grazing country. Snow fell 



MINING. 121 

to the depth of six inches on the 18th of June. 
From a little beyond Salt Lake to the Sierra Nevadas, 
five hundred and fifty miles, there is literally nothing 
but barren sterile hills and desert plains, in which 
a rabbit must be dexterous to obtain one meal a 
day. What little wood now exists will soon be 
exhausted, while the streams all sink in the soil 
soon after leaving the mountain canons. Provisions 
and supplies have to be hauled in the different 
localities from one hundred to eight hundred 
miles. 

The mineral lodes themselves are far from being 
uniform. They are always located in some out of 
the way place, and assume all kinds of fantastic 
shapes : some rich, acceptable, and quite regular 
in quality ; others capricious, poor, lean, and wholly 
barren in spots. The ore itself is more capricious 
still, and, from the admixture of base metals, py- 
rites, sulphurites, galena, arsenic, etc., resists de- 
composition or refuses to amalgamate, thus defeat- 
ing theories, increasing expenses, and destroying- 
profits. Money, skill, and patience are required 
to reduce the business to that general basis or stand- 
ard upon which the law of chances or insurance 
can be applied. It is largely to the interest of the 
country that these minerals should be developed, 
and those who have risked their own money in 
such enterprises are entitled to the nation's thanks. 
Unfortunately, however, there is a way of making 



122 FBOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

these risks on other people's money, which, hke all 
joint stock operations, leads to carelessness, inat- 
tention, extravagance, and robbery. 

The amount of precious metals, compared with 
the wealth of the country, is at all times very 
small. In 1860 we had only $330,000,000 of gold 
and silver in the whole United States, while the 
cities of New York and Brooklyn alone were 
assessed $800,000,000. The permanent addition 
of $165,000,000 of metallic currency would double 
the current value of all the property in the coun- 
try in a short space of time. Such was the impulse 
given to the commerce of the world after the dis- 
covery of gold in California and Australia, that its 
real prosperity, development, and accumulation of 
distributed wealth, may be dated from that time. 
Hence, I say, we are all interested in telling the 
exact truth in regard to these new mineral fields — 
in sending the right men there, with the right in- 
structions and sufficient means to dig ore, overcome 
the natural obstacles, and, by making money for 
themselves, enhance the value of our own proper- 
ties. Many have said to me : Why speak so 
plainly and discouragingly of mining enterprises? 
I had the utmost confidence in these mines, and 
have very large investments in them. I came 
here to find out things for certain, not on a 
guessing expedition. I do not beheve in hunting 
for larks in January, shipping coals to Newcastle, 



MINING. 123 

or in sending fools to Nevada. Undue enthusiasm 
and impractical judgment has peopled many of 
those places with a class of men incapable to 
perform what they too immaturely commenced, 
and, by their failures, have not only ruined them- 
selves and friends, but have damaged the reputation 
of the mining country irreparably. 

If you have the right kind of a practical man 
(hard to find), and plenty of money to back him, 
select your lode, work it for a year in some other 
person's mill, define its quality, then go ahead. 
Unless you have the two first, and can afford to 
wait a reasonable time for results, let the whole 
thing alone. 

I may be wrong, but it strikes me this is the kind 
of information our people want, and, I am sorry to 
say, seldom obtain. 

' To-morrow I take the steamer for New York. 
My stay in San Francisco has been short, but inter- 
esting and agreeable. Her citizens are liberal, 
public spirited, and progressive. I desired to visit 
Oregon, but am unable to do so. The lack of in- 
formation from home concentrates my feehngs 
there to such an extent as to make me hurry up 
the few hours which now intervene before my de- 
parture, and the last morning dawns before I touch 
my couch. A telegram or a letter would relieve me 
much, and might prolong my stay, although I had 
engaged passage on this steamer by telegraph from 
Salt Lake before I arrived. 



124 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 



XVI. 

Leaving San Francisco — Privateer Shenandoah — 
Steamer Companions — Children — Whales — Lower 
California — Acapulco — Death at Sea — Steamer 
Fare. 

At Sea, Off Mexico, Aug. 13, 1865. 

Steamer day is a great event in San Francisco. 
"Going to the States/' as they call it, is the long- 
ing desire of almost every- inhabitant there. Those 
who cannot go have friends who can, and it seems 
as if the whole city came down to see us off. I 
found a half dozen cases of wine had been sent by 
kind friends to my room, and other luxuries were 
provided in profusion. 

At last the hour arrived — the city was hid be- 
hind the hills — we passed the Golden Gate and 
were upon the blue Pacific. The privateer She- 
nandoah has just destroyed thirty whalers up in the 
Northern Ocean, the news of which reached San 
Francisco the day before we started. It was the 
belief of returned captains that the Shenandoah had 
tacked her course, and was then laying in wait for 
our steamer and treasure, down the coast. It 
created great consternation, and several passengers 
refused to go. The Government agent despatched 



A SCARE. 125 

the Saginaw, the only war steamer in port, to escort 
us to Panama. She was very slow, and we had to 
lay by for her during the afternoon. At evening 
she was some distance astern, and the next morn- 
ing was not to be seen. Our captain had made up 
his mind to take the chances, and gave her the slip. 
We took a long outside course, and was out of sight 
of land for several days. On the afternoon of the 
fifth day smoke was seen in the distance which 
soon grew into a steamer, and news came back to 
the cabin where I was writing that the Shenandoah 
was bearing down upon us. In an instant every- 
thing was excitement. Every glass was pointed 
and every kind of fear expressed and speculation 
entered into. Appearances were against us. My 
luck — Indians by land and pirates by sea. Trunks 
were hastily filled, valuables put out of sight, and 
babies got in order. We had two guns which were 
unUmbered and shotted — what for I could not 
divine, for we should only have added to our mis- 
fortunes by trying to fight a war vessel. One 
spinster lady of middle age — literary, I mistrust, 
from her peculiar ways — had put up her book and 
come on deck with bonnet, vail, and gloves, a band- 
box in one hand, a vahse in the other, waiting for 
the attack. She seemed anxious to surrender, and I 
was irresistibly reminded of the young lady who, 
when the town was besieged, asked her aunt — 
" When will the ravishino; commence ?" The stran- 



126 FBOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

ger fired a gun to bring us to, and we came within 
close range before she was made out to be the 
United States steamer Wateree, which had hailed 
us for news. She boarded us in true man-of-war 
style, and when we parted she saluted us with a 
gun, and we her by raising and lowering our flag 
three times. 

I am not in the least opposed to populating the 
country in a reasonable manner, if the rising gen- 
eration can be kept in their proper spheres ; in fact, 
I plainly realize that manufacturing dry goods 
would be a slim business after a while, if children 
were interfered with ; but children on an ocean 
steamer, in a hot climate, are a most infernal nui- 
sance. There were exactly thirteen babies belong- 
ing to rooms in my quarter of the cabin, and this 
appeared to be a specimen of the boat. First, they 
get sick and vomit, then they get the prickly heat 
and squall ; finally they get whipped and yell. 
They wallow on the floor, they climb into your 
chair, they stop up the gangways, they are bound 
to fall overboard or down the stairs, and keep the 
mothers in a stew, and everybody else very uncom- 
fortable. A woman with a child is just no company 
at all. You can't talk to her — she won't listen ; 
she can't talk to you — it is " Susa don't do so,'' 
" Susa want a drink?" or, Jimmy this and Jimmy 
that — breaks in everywhere as if the whole world 
had a particular interest in this particular child, 



WHALES. 127 

aud were willing to sacrifice their whole time and 
pleasure to the thoughtless demands of a nervous 
mother, and for no good. With no disrespect to 
the ladies, I plainly suggest there is much which 
they can beneficially learn upon this subject. 

Our company had now become somewhat ac- 
quainted. After one day, with occasional excep- 
tions, the sea was smooth — the moon was bright ; 
we happened to have musicians on board ; the 
deck was frequently cleared and dancing made the 
evening merry as a marriage bell. 

Many whales were seen during our voyage. I 
saw one large black fellow pass close to our star- 
board side, which exposed a perpendicular head of 
ten feet and a back of fifty feet out of water. One 
morning early the ocean seemed to be alive with 
black porpoises, or horse-fish, as they are called. 
They are five to ten feet long, very pretty in shape, 
and produce a half barrel of oil. They were all 
jumping out of the water in one direction, and, 
could they have been counted, I venture the 
opinion that one hundred thousand were in the 
air at one time, in an area of five miles. 

We sail along the coast of Lower California. It 
is barren, mountainous, almost treeless for its 
whole extent. Early on the morning of the 
seventh day we entered the land-locked harbor of 
Acapulco, Mexico, in the face of Fort San Diego, 
which the French had battered to pieces a few 



128 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

months ago. There are no docks. We anchor in 
deep water and take in coal from hghters. There 
is no good coal on the Pacific coast, and that which 
the Steamship Company use is brought from Penn- 
sylvania. A party is made up to go on shore in a 
small boat, and I had the pleasure of playing the 
agreeable to a lady of superior culture and intelli- 
gence. Passing the numerous native boys, who 
apparently live in the water and dive for coins 
thrown in at a depth of many feet, we salute Maxi- 
milian's representative on the beach, and then do 
up the town. 

Acapulco forms one point of a triangle between 
Yera Cruz and the city of Mexico, being about four 
hundred miles west of the former, and two hun- 
dred miles south-west of the latter place. It has 
not to exceed two thousand inhabitants. The hills 
immediately back of the city soon rise into granite 
mountains of volcanic character which shake the 
place to pieces once in about ten years. It is located 
in the torrid zone, and is said to be the hottest and 
most unhealthy place in America. We tread upon 
our shadows to the south at noon. This place 
was founded one hundred years before the pilgrims 
landed upon Plymouth Rock, has the best harbor 
upon the Pacific coast, and is the principal western 
seaport of the empire of Mexico ; and yet, when I 
endeavored to secure some kind of a conveyance to 
go into the back country, I found there was not a 



ACAPULCO. 129 

wheeled vehicle in Acapulco, or any wagon road 
leading out of it ! All of the intercourse and trans- 
portation of the country has to be done upon pack 
mules over moimtain trails, just as they were 
marked out by the buccaneers in 1520. I saw a 
train of some half dozen mules come in in this way, 
each with a three hundred pound bale of cotton 
upon their poor backs. What hope is there for 
such a people except in extermination! Improvi- 
dent, intolerant, and extravagant, they all resist 
mechanical and utile innovations, and do nothing 
to improve the rising generation. I saw nothing 
growing except indigenous plants, among which 
are the bananas, cocoa-nut, oranges, limes, alligator 
pears, and maringos. The few shops contain noth- 
ing but imported goods, and the only articles 1 could 
find worth bringing away of domestic production, 
were cigars and strings of sea-shell beads, unless it 
might have been some black-eyed senoritas whom 
I saw in a house where we called for water. A 
mother and four daughters were present ; hoops 
were dispensed with, and no superfluous dress en- 
cumbered or concealed the symmetry of their forms. 
All were beautiful, but one was angelic. They 
were cultivated and refined, but could not con- 
verse in English. They brought us water from a 
large earthen jug set in the ground ; soi?ie cake 
and home-made taffa. Their pantomimic efforts to 

9 



130 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

make our stay agreeable were entirely successful. 
Peace be unto that house. 

We wandered in a cocoa-nut grove, visited the 
old fort, and dined at a miserable restaurant — the 
best in the place — upon chicken, eggs, bread, fruit, 
and coffee. When I asked for butter, milk, and 
ice, they laughed at my verdancy. I saw just one 
man at work — he with a cigar in his mouth — pre- 
tending to lay up the wall of a house. Maximil- 
ian's military forces were being reviewed under a 
piazza. They consisted of just fourteen men, no 
two of a size, and of irregular uniform. What a 
farce 1 The houses are built either of bamboo, 
and open sides to let the air through, or very thick 
stone or dirt wall to condense atmosphere. Lazy 
men and women were swinging in hammocks in 
the shade, while nude children were wallowing in 
the streets or bathing in the water. 

At four o'clock a gun from the steamer warned 
us on board. We had to carry the ladies over wet 
planks across the beach into the skiff, and then pull 
and lift them up the side of the vessel upon the 
deck. Hard work for warm weather ; but we did 
our duty like men ? 

Six days more and we are in Panama. We 
have been frequently in sight of islands and the 
main land — always hilly and no traces of culti- 
vation. 

A French military officer died at three o'clock. 



STEAMER FARE. 131 

His remains were sewed in a sack, with a weight 
tied upon the feet, placed upon a board, and at ten 
o'clock at night we committed them to the deep 
from the stern of the ship. One splash, and all 
was over. A hard, cruel proceeding. The engine 
ceased for less than a minute, but the motion of the 
vessel was not stopped, and the body fell flat upon 
the surface of the water, and floated off in the dis- 
tance instead of sinking immediately out of sight. 
"We hear a great deal said about the splendid 
living upon these steamers. I desire to say that 
they are better than on the Atlantic side ; but 
both are a disgrace to civilization. We were on 
the new steamer " Colorado, '^ and under a favorite 
commander. The captain and purser insulted the 
entire company at every meal by having extra 
dishes, iced butter, milk, etc., for themselves and 
friends ; while others, sitting at the same tables, 
had running butter, no milk, brown sugar, and 
limited supphes of other things. The chunk beef 
and bacon, given to the second-class passengers, 
were so foul that no human being could take 
them into his stomach. This was not accident but 
design — repeated day by day. I made it my busi- 
ness to find these things out. Oh ! how the poor 
steerage passengers do have to suffer and humili- 
ate themselves ! I would like to see some avenging 
thunderbolt palsy the upstart sneaks who make 
weak women eat filthy meat standing ; who compel 



132 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

them to sit upon the floor m a hot sun if they want 
pure air, and who heap upon them and other un- 
fortunates indignities which make my blood boil 
to witness. It is very usual to bespatter command- 
ers of vessels with fulsome praise, and the thing 
was proposed on this occasion in the shape of com- 
plimentary resolutions by some of the passengers, 
who thought a glass of wine with the captain at 
the last dinner a great honor ; but I squelched the 
thing squarely by saying, in his presence, that I 
should first require a letter from the captain to his 
passengers commending our forbearance in not 
openly resisting his insults. It was quite difficult 
for me to keep my hands off some of these fellows 
several times. 



PANAMA. 133 



XVII 



Panama — The Isthmus — Aspinwall — Caeibbean Sea — 
St. Domingo — Cuba — Sandy Hook — Home. 

Steamer off Carolina, August 20, 1865. 

In thirteen days from San Francisco we anchor 
under Perico Island, three miles from Panama, and 
go ashore in small boats. I obtain three hours to 
see the city, which is purely Spanish, with narrow 
streets, a cathedral, a college, several large but 
cheap churches, and others in ruins — all Catholic, 
of course ; no other buildings of note. Population 
not to exceed six thousand, although it has been 
more. The ancient town of Panama, which is sev- 
eral miles south of this, was destroyed by the 
buccaneers in 1670, and is now nothing but a heap 
of ruins. 

On an open plaza near the sea wall is a large 
public well, where women come to wash clothes 
and carry away water in earthen pitchers. In true 
oriental, non-progressive style, there is no means 
of raising the water except what each comer ex- 
temporizes at the time. Piles of clothes, and a 
hundred turbaned women with baskets, tubs, or 
water-pitchers upon their heads, and countless little 
urchins rolling about in a state of nature, present a 
scene novel, if not interesting. In all these Spanish 



134: FBOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

countries we notice many old-fashioned spotted 
lepers seated about the corners asking alms. One 
fellow here besought charity, who was smoking a 
good cigar, as if receiving gifts was wholly an hon- 
orable business. A few uninteresting photographic 
views were the only things of local interest which I 
could find to carry away. Panama is not what 
may be termed hot ; the nights are cool. I do not 
believe it is unhealthy. 

We crossed the isthmus in two hours and a half. 
Here, again, [ was much disappointed. I supposed 
the forests were dense, and that we surmounted 
high lands. Upon the contrary, there is not a ten- 
feet cut or a tunnel on the road, and nothing in 
the make of the country that reminds one of an 
ascending or a descending grade. Hills appear in 
the distance, but the route taken by the road — 
which is only forty-seven and a half miles long, 
and, consequently, nearly straight — is as level as 
an undulating prairie. I could not ascertain what 
elevation is made, but it cannot be much ; and I 
am confident a canal will some day pass European 
and Asiatic commerce through this gate of America. 
The Tuira river, further up upon the western 
coast, is navigable one hundred and two miles? 
while the Chagres, on the eastern side, is navigable 
for sixty miles. Trees, too, are scarce and small. 
The principal face of the country is covered by 
weeds, bushes, and small-sized scattering trees, the 
two species of most interest being the slender cocoa- 



THE ISTHMUS. 135 

nut and the spreading bread-tree, with their im- 
mense caskets of fruit. We stop at four or five Uttle 
native villages, composed entirely of bamboo huts 
and thatched roofs. Not ten acres of land appear 
to be cultivated on the route. We followed the 
Chagres river, running to the east, for some dis- 
tance before I knew which way the current ran, 
and I did not know when we arrived at the divid- 
ing ridge. 

The temperate atmosphere of this tropical cli- 
mate — its undulating surface, and its capacity of 
production — must make Central America a health- 
ful and wealthy country, if it ever secures an enter- 
prising population. The small State of Panama 
alone, which contains 29,000 square miles, and is 
only the size of South Carolina, has 149 streams 
flowing into the Atlantic, and 326 into the Pacific, 
and two considerable ranges of broken mountains. 
Indigo, coffee, tobacco, cocoa-nut, rice, maize, 
plaintains, valuable dye-woods, etc., grow sponta- 
neously. 

Aspinwall seems to be very low, and the other 
end of the same low land upon which Panama 
stands. It consists of a single street of cheap wood 
buildings, principally hotels and restaurants. Con- 
nected with, and extending down the bay, is the 
old Spanish town, formerly called Colon. Here is 
the Post-Office where I went to inquire for letters. 
I had ,to go around to a back door, get behind the 
desk, look the letters over, and help myself 



136 FEOM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. 

This is the rainy season. It sprinkles — some- 
times rains for a few minutes ; the sun then shines 
furious and sultry for half an hour, and then 
another cloud and rain. 

We arrived at Panama anchorage at seven in the 
morning. We leave Aspinwall at five in the after- 
noon. And now, with an additional passenger list, 
we are crowded on the little steamer Costa Rica, 
which, so far as I can judge, was built to see how 
uncomfortable passengers could be made in a warm 
climate. The cabins are perfect enclosures all round 
— not an air opening anywhere. The living is hor- 
rid, and we are all incensed. The rain continues 
by spells for two days. We cross the Caribbean 
sea, make the island of St. Domingo to our right 
and Cuba to our left, and the eighth day from 
Aspinwall — the twenty-third from San Francisco — 
at two in the morning, we behold Nevesink light, 
lay off Sandy Hook until daybreak, take on a health 
officer at Staten Island, and reach the Canal-street 
dock, in New York, at eight o'clock. I drive to 
my office with speed — I meet old friends — I behold 
you, dear reader, turning the corner, and all things 
seem new, fresh, and full of joy and beauty to me. 
I left New York on the 7th June, have encom- 
passed what I have written in these letters besides 
my private business, travelled over eight thousand 
miles, and am home again well and thankful this 
25th day of August, 1865. 

Demas Barnes. 



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